I’m pretty new to GIS and OSM, I’m doing research as to a data point exists to get the world’s national parks.
Does anyone know if it does?
If not, what are my options? Can I contribute for example by gathering all the data in some way?
Hi, I think you could have a look here: https://www.iucn.org/theme/protected-areas/our-work/world-database-protected-areas
This is perfect, thank you!
The definition “national park” means something different in different places - a US “national park” is somewhat different from a UK one, for example.
OSM does have data on National Parks (following the definition at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dnational_park). There may be places where data is missing, and you could help by adding that.
You can add new data based on survey, or based on import from an external source, but if importing you’ll need to follow the rules at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines.
You’ll also find it useful to look for overlapping definitions such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:boundary%3Dprotected_area - in the UK all national parks are mapped this way, because we have a number of things that are named “national park” and a number of other things named “area of outstanding natural beauty” that are almost-but-not-quite national parks, and it makes sense to have them in the same hierarchy.
You can also help by checking that national parks in a particular area are topologically valid. I wrote a diary entry about that recently: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/diary/395232.
Thanks for this, is there recommended software to view all this osm data, and for example filter, compare datasets?