Hi there,
Some help needed for a total newbie. I’m trying to download a list of Points of Interest/POIs (most specifically food venues: restaurants, supermarkets…) from a UK county.
So hey presto, this is what I’ve done:
- I’ve gone to the API website (info here: http://www.overpass-api.de/query_form.html - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API))
- Then using a query I’ve downloaded a bound box covering the area I’m interested in (not the county itself, but a box defined by max.&min lat and max&min longitude of the county).
- Result: a file (~160 Mbytes), that is supposed to contain all the data from that area (food venues, and all the rest: road, streets, etc).
Since the file POIs are to be processed by another application (ArcGIS), I’ve exported the file I’ve got from the API to different formats (KML, CSV…). Apparently KML format, my favorite, doesn’t work and gives errors (in Google Earth & ArcGIS). Not sure whether this is caused by the source file, or by the conversion…
So I’m really in doubt on whether I’ve made the right decision and file is correct. Can anyone help on these questions:
• Is Openstreet API the right way to go for getting POIs for the UK? Any other free data source? Any other suggestions?
• Is there a way to get the POIs from a county (apart from the bounding box) (Y/N)?
• Do I get ALL the POIs in the Openstreetmap when downloading from the API? I’m askign this 'cause when you open the file, number of certain POIs (say, pubs) is not huge (roughly, 100 for this county), whereas when I go to Openstreet map the details and number of pubs seems to be higher. Shouldn’t both match precisely?
Any other simple alternative ways to deal with this also appreciated.
Thanks in advance, A.