Is there a good free POI database (i'm thinking mainly public places like cinemas, shops, etc). OpenStreetMap would seem like a good source, but I haven't worked out how to download the POI database.
+4
A:
The OpenStreetMap data can be downloaded at http://planet.openstreetmap.org/planet-latest.osm.bz2 (7.6Gb file!) - or you can get smaller, country-specific excerpts from geofabrik.de or cloudmade.com. There's no POI-only download as best I know; you need to process the XML data and extract it from there.
thanks, i've actually looked in to the openstreetmap thing, and i noticed that cloudmade were offering continent-wide data here - http://downloads.cloudmade.com/there seems to be an ambiguity about what cloudmade (a commercial company) and openstreetmap produce. the cloudmade terms and conditions suggest that it is not quite free.
cannyboy
2009-12-22 19:52:05
@cannyboy: Cloudmade Map Data downloads are licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0 just as OpenStreetMap requires. See http://www.cloudmade.com/terms_conditions under *5. API and Map Data Downloads*.
Christian
2010-01-26 17:31:01
+2
A:
If you want to retrieve points of interest from OpenStreetMap, you basically have two choices:
- Use a snapshot of the OpenStreetMap database and extract the data you need. Information regarding where to download the data and how to extract it can be found in the Planet.osm article on OpenStreetMap's wiki.
- Depending on your application you might want to query the OpenStreetMap database live on smaller areas. There are several APIs available, of which one is xapi. For example, the query
http://www.informationfreeway.org/api/0.6/node[amenity=hospital][bbox=-0.54,51.38,0.33,51.64]will get all hospitals in and around London as an XML file.
Christian
2010-01-26 17:57:02