Geo boundary

A geo boundary is an item whose body is a single polygon (or multipolygon) plus a name. Use it anywhere a system feature needs "the same shape, referenced from multiple places": the county boundary you scope sharing to, the floodplain a dashboard filters to, the project area a map opens to.

Why geo boundaries are their own item

Like pick lists, the same shape often appears in many configs. A boundary item lets you reference it by id and edit the geometry once when (for example) the city annexes a new neighborhood and the official boundary shifts.

Where they're referenced

• Share geo limits. A per-share polygon clip on a layer. The user can read the layer, but only sees features inside the geo boundary.
• Map viewport defaults. Open the map zoomed to this boundary.
• Dashboard filters. Constrain dashboard widgets to features inside the boundary.
• Derived layer steps. Clip-by-geo-boundary, fishnet over a geo-boundary extent, group-by polygons-in-this-boundary.

What's stored

• Geometry. A polygon or multipolygon in EPSG:4326.
• Name and description.
• Computed metadata: area in m^2 / mi^2 / ha, bounding box, centroid.

Creating one

Three ways:

1. Import from a single-feature GeoJSON or Shapefile via the new-item wizard.
2. Draw directly in the portal with a polygon-draw tool.
3. Copy from a feature. The "Save geometry as boundary" action on a layer's feature row converts that feature's polygon into a new geo-boundary item.

Editing

The detail page has an edit-geometry tool. Edits are tracked in the engine's observation log; downstream references see the new shape on the next save. Anything pre-computed against the old shape (a share geo limit's effective row set, a clipped derived layer) updates lazily on the next read.

Notes

• Lines and points aren't geo boundaries; this item type is specifically for polygons used as scopes/clips.
• Multipart polygons are fine. A county that includes islands stays as one geo boundary.