Check out Mike Collinson's script http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Ewmjc#Miscellaneous_Offerings
In the Philippines, we are doing incremental import (first town names, then islands, then mountain peaks, etc). This way, we can edit the data in manageable chunks. There are a lot of errors in location and names, so be careful in importing everything. You will get a lot of data, but a whole lot maybe garbage depending on the area. Still a very useful resource for developing countries. On Fri, Feb 20, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:13 PM, Ivan Garcia <[email protected]> wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I recently discovered the site available by the US Army with millions of >> world geonames (towns, etc) here >> [1] http://earth-info.nga.mil/gns/html/namefiles.htm >> >> The OSM wiki says that there is no legal problem using it, altought we >> should put the source tag >> [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SWDB#GEOnet_Names_Server >> >> Here is the XML explanations of the CVS that you can download from the link >> [1], >> [3] >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Geographic_data/Using_NGA_data/Localization/Description_of_Names_Files_for_Countries_and_Territories_Format/English >> >> The question is ? Anybody has developed a script to convert this CVS into a >> KML or OSM file containing all the towns of a country? >> This can be very useful for countries in developing countries almost empty. > > They're called GNS files, if you search around the mailing lists > you'll find some information about them, there's also a sparse page on > the wiki: > > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/GNS > > Here's a program to convert them (somewhat) which I modified from > another program I found on the wiki: > > http://git.nix.is/?p=avar/gns-to-osm;a=tree;h=master;hb=master > git://git.nix.is/avar/gns-to-osm > > Here's an example of GNS (in)accuracy (originally from > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-is/2008-December/000053.html): > > OSM data now: http://flickr.com/photos/avarab/3133771125/sizes/o/ > GNS data: http://flickr.com/photos/avarab/3133777841/sizes/o/ > OSM and GNS data side by side: > http://flickr.com/photos/avarab/3133764871/sizes/o/ > > As you can see the GNS data is prone to miss mountain peaks by a few > kilometers, place farms in the middle of lakes and other "this was > made by throwing darts at a globe" stuff like that. > > Things are generally pretty topographically correct, and can be useful > in cases where you can move the nodes according to landsat data, local > knowledge or other stuff like that. > > On my ever-expanding TODO list where nothing gets done I have a "write > a viable user-powered GNS importer for OSM" item, basically: > > * Go through the entire GNS dataset and split it up by country/type of > feature (e.g. one .osm file for peak, one for farms, one for glaciers > etc.) > * Present a web interface where users can download e.g. "peaks in > Zimbabwe that haven't been uploaded" > * The user will then open the .osm file in his editor, move nodes > around according to local knowledge/landsat and upload them > * The uploaded node will have a gns:UFI (unique feature ID) key and > won't appear in the next extract of "peaks in Zimbabwe that haven't > been uploaded" > > This (or something like it) is IMO the only non-sucky way to import > GNS data, it has been imported as-is in some places like the Faroe > Islands (which has no active mappers), but I wouldn't like a mass > import of raw GNS data in any are which I edit, having a bunch of > nodes which are off by few dozen meters to a few kilometers isn't > acceptable quality for OSM. Especially for datasets such as these > which you can merge with the OSM data on your own if you really want > to use them. > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > -- cheers, maning ------------------------------------------------------ "Freedom is still the most radical idea of all" -N.Branden wiki: http://esambale.wikispaces.com/ blog: http://epsg4253.wordpress.com/ ------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
