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Getting OSM Data en

There are several options for downloading OpenStreetMap data extracts, including GeoFabrik which provides daily country-level extracts in shapefile format. Metro Extracts and BBBike offer weekly city-level extracts. For customized extracts, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Overpass Turbo allow selecting specific areas and tags, while the Overpass API can retrieve large datasets through HTTP requests using Overpass queries.

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Hendra Cesmamulya
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45 views

Getting OSM Data en

There are several options for downloading OpenStreetMap data extracts, including GeoFabrik which provides daily country-level extracts in shapefile format. Metro Extracts and BBBike offer weekly city-level extracts. For customized extracts, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Overpass Turbo allow selecting specific areas and tags, while the Overpass API can retrieve large datasets through HTTP requests using Overpass queries.

Uploaded by

Hendra Cesmamulya
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LearnOSM

Getting OSM Data


Reviewed 2016-04-05
When you want to get the most recent OpenStreetMap data, the easiest way is to download an
extract from a website. There are various web services that provide data extracts for an area of
your choosing.

Downloading Data Extracts

GeoFabrik
GeoFabrik is a company which specializes in working with OpenStreetMap. They provide a
variety of free extracts in shapefile and raw OSM format on their download website. The
advantage of downloading GeoFabrik data is that it is updated every day, and its easy and
reliable. One disadvantage is that the data is extracted by country, and not all countries are
available.

Metro Extracts
Another website maintained by Mapzen provides shapefiles and raw OSM format for cities
around the world, extracted weekly. This is useful if you are looking for data extracts for a single
city.

BBBike
BBBike offers something similar as Metro Extracts but for a different selection of cities. The
data is updated weekly as well.
Remember that features in OpenStreetMap have an unlimited number of free tags, but
shapefiles have attributes stored in a limited number of columns. This means that when
OSM data is converted into shapefiles, only the specified tags will be included in the
shapefile table. The websites listed above provide shapefiles with a default set of
common tags, but if you want to extract specific tags you will need to use one of the
more specialized services in the next section or learn how to export the data yourself.

Customized Extracts

HOT Exports
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has created a service that allows users to select the area

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that they want to extract, and also use JOSM Presets to select custom tags to be included in the
extract. The service is available to all countries where HOT works, at export.hotosm.org.

BBBike
You can select your own area from any part of the world using the service at
http://extract.bbbike.org/. Disadvantages are that you arent able to select customizable tags and
that the amount of data which you can download is limited.

Overpass
Overpass is an API (Application Programming Interface) for extracting data from a read-only
copy of the main OpenStreetMap database which can deliver an almost arbitrary amount of data.
Using a query language you can customize which subset of the data you obtain. You can either
use the API directly by generating a http-request or through the overpass turbo interface.

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Overpass Turbo
Overpass Turbo is an interactive query generator where you should first zoom to the appropriate
region on the map. Enter your query in the left field of the page and trigger any actions using the
buttons at the top of the interface. If you are new to the query language then using the wizard
should get you started. The OSM wiki contains a full description of the syntax of the query
language as well as a collection of examples.
The map will highlight all data selected by your query which you can then modify. Press Run
to refresh the result display. Once you are satisfied with what you see then Export offers a
number of choices, among them raw OSM data. If the amount of data is limited you may as well
access them directly after switching between map view and data view using the rightmost
buttons at the top. The export option Query -> compact OverpassQL generates a hyperlink to be
used for the Overpass API.

If you want to engineer a fancy query in order to obtain a subset of the data from a large area
then it is a good idea to test and improve this query in Overpass Turbo on a small area. You can
then zoom out to your complete region of interest and use the resulting query url directly for the
API. The next section explains how you can do this.

Overpass API
Overpass API is a dedicated service optimized for querying but not writing OpenStreetMap data.

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Due to this optimization it operates very fast compared to the main database api and has virtually
no limits on the amount of data transferred. Several instances of this service are available on the
net, the one used in the following example also provides some information on its homepage
If you have a working query-URL for submitting an http-request to the Overpass API then a tool
such as wget - available for different operating systems, see here - allows you to download the
raw OSM data directly from the server and store them locally. The following snippet is a script
for the bash shell common on Unix systems which obtains all data within a specified bounding
box:
echo lower left latitude
read ll_lat
echo lower left longitude
read ll_lon
echo upper right latitude
read ur_lat
echo upper_right longitude
read ur_lon
echo output file
read file
url="http://overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=(node($ll_lat,$ll_lon,
$ur_lat,$ur_lon);<;rel(br););out meta;"
wget -O $file "$url"

What happens here (for the curious who do not want to read the full query language
documentation)?
node() selects all nodes within a bounding box;
< recurses up fully, i.e. selects all ways containing these nodes and all relations
containing these nodes and ways;
rel(br) selects all parent relations of relations obtained so far (otherwise master relations
would not be obtained)

Summary
The services mentioned in this chapter are all that the average user needs to get the OSM data
they want and be able to work with it in GIS software. However, you may want to learn more
powerful ways of working with the data yourself. The remaining chapters in this section are quite
technical, but show more advanced methods of manipulating and accessing OSM data.
Was this chapter helpful? Let us know and help us improve the guides!
[email protected]
@learnOSM
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Official HOT OSM learning materials

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