Smooth jagged sub-national region boundaries (v0.16.0)

Part of #16

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -2,6 +2,15 @@
 
 All notable changes to **History** are listed here, newest first.
 
+## v0.16.0 — 2026-10-13 09:37
+- **Smoothed the jagged sub-national region boundaries with Douglas–Peucker vertex-thinning (Part of #16).** The v0.14 coarsening (boolean dissolve) and Natural Earth's 1:10m digitization left some boundaries overly jagged — the worst being regions the dissolve split into many small zig-zag fragments, e.g. **SI-048 Kocevje (Slovenia, 57 parts)** and **MK-36 Kavadartsi (N. Macedonia, 8 parts)**. The new `scripts/smooth-regions.mjs` (`npm run smooth:regions`) runs `@turf/simplify` (Ramer–Douglas–Peucker, tolerance ~**50 m**) over **every ring of every polygon**, dropping the redundant "in-between" vertices of a shallow zig-zag while keeping the overall shape.
+- **Vertex-thinning only — no topology change.** DP only removes points: it never moves a border, never merges/dissolves a part, and never creates or removes a ring. So the dataset contract is fully preserved — still **1,796 regions** with identical `id` / `properties.name` / `properties.parent`, all **177 countries** covered, the same **5,026 parts / 5,027 rings**, the single **KZ-KZY** hole, and all **83 islands**. The 18 degenerate 3-point "micro-dot" rings (Ragged Island, the Paracels, …) are kept verbatim (`@turf/simplify` requires ≥4 pts and would otherwise throw).
+- **A gentle pass, reported honestly.** At 50 m the dataset is already fairly smooth (the v0.14 dissolve produced low-vertex, widely-spaced boundaries — median consecutive-vertex spacing ~18 km), so this is a light cleanup: **111,891 → 111,175 vertices (716 removed, 0.64%)** across **542 of 1,796** regions. **Kocelje 612 → 599** and **Kavadartsi 169 → 163** verts; both keep their exact part count (the "mess" there is fragmentation, which thinning — under the no-topology-change constraint — does not fix). The file shrinks **2,302,473 → 2,289,528 bytes (2.29 MB)**. Bump `TOLERANCE_M` to 100 / 200 m and re-run for a stronger pass (100 m → 974 removed; 200 m → 1,312 removed) — the pass stays idempotent either way.
+- **The "messy" regions are really fragmentation artifacts, not fine jaggedness.** Ranking by **part density** (parts packed per unit area) rather than raw part count — which is dominated by legitimate *dispersed* archipelagos (Nunavut 213, Alaska 159, Antarctica 135, British Columbia 84) — surfaces the genuinely messy **coherent regions the dissolve left fragmented**: **SI-048 Kocevje (SVN, 57 parts in ~16,600 km²)**, **GR-H Stereá Elláda / Central Greece (GRC, 53 parts)**, **KR-46 South Jeolla (KOR, 28 parts)**, **SE-C Uppsala (SWE, 19 parts)**, **HR-13 Zadarska (HRV, 17 parts)**, plus the milder Balkan **MK-36 Kavadartsi (MKD, 8 parts)**. These real land regions (the Balkan ones in particular) ended up as many scattered fragments — the "similar shape problems".
+- **Deterministic + idempotent.** One `@turf/simplify` pass at a fixed tolerance, then 4-dp rounding (the same convention as the other scripts). The output already sits at the pass's fixed point, so re-running on the smoothed file is byte-identical (sha256 `70a43541…`, verified across repeated runs); `public/regions.geo.json` and the built `dist/regions.geo.json` are sha256-identical.
+- **Tests.** `scripts/regions.test.ts` gains an eighth test pinning the v0.16 fixed point: 1,796 regions, 5,026 parts, 5,027 rings, the single KZ-KZY hole, and exactly **111,175** vertices (8 tests total). All prior assertions (well-formed, unique ids, 177-country coverage, area floor, holes, coverage band) pass unchanged on the smoothed dataset.
+- Part of #16
+
 ## v0.15.0 — 2026-10-12 13:49
 - **Filled the small holes left by the v0.14 coarsening (Part of #16).** The coarsened `public/regions.geo.json` still carried **2,245 tiny enclosed holes** (all < 500 km² in practice) — unfilled patches left by the boolean dissolves and Natural Earth's own digitization, which showed up as "holes in regions". The new `scripts/cleanup-regions.mjs` (`npm run cleanup:regions`) drops every inner ring smaller than the 1,000 km² threshold so each region becomes solid: across **498 features, 56,484 km²** of artifact area was filled, removing the visible unfilled dots.
 - **Real water is kept, not erased.** Any enclosed hole ≥ 1,000 km² survives as a hole. In this dataset the genuinely large lakes (the Great Lakes, the Caspian, the Aral, Lake Superior) had already been dissolved by the v0.14 coarsening, so none remain to preserve; the only surviving hole is a single medium one — **KZ-KZY (Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan) at 5,858 km²**, a real water body in the Aral basin — which is kept. The 1,000 km² threshold sits comfortably between the tiny artifacts (all < 500) and any genuine lake, so it fills exactly the artifacts and nothing else.