showing different layer from downloaded data

I have exported some data(clicked transport map in layers) in a particular province then i got a file named map.osm
I opened it in java open street map editor and i see multipolygons
how can I show the roads only, or rivers/stream only, or tourist areas/bldg only or agricultural lands only or urban(residential and commercial) areas only
and save it as shapefile?
*another thing is that i downloaded many data (map1.osm, map2.osm…) because the province is big…can i have an output of the whole province showing roads only or rivers/streams only…etc.?
Thank you for helping this is for my undergraduate thesis! :slight_smile:

Many questions … and some answers here:

All your aims can be realized by consulting the OSM wiki.

Use the search function there and later read read read.

So have a look about osmconvert, osmfilter, shapefile and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm in the wiki.

If you have got the raw OSM data for the region you want and filtered in the way you need, convert it to shapefiles … or try some “rendering” of raw OSM data with related software like maperitive or others.

Or consult http://help.openstreetmap.org and do searches there with appropriate keywords … there are many FAQs and also specific threads about aims similar to yours

An easy start could be to install OpenJUMP Plus from the development snapshots http://sourceforge.net/projects/jump-pilot/files/OpenJUMP_snapshots/ and follow the tutorial http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/jump-pilot/index.php?title=Working_with_OpenStreetMap_data

If you want to convert big amounts of OSM data into GIS formats I think that the two best options are:

  • Osm2pgsql. Use it for converting data into PostGIS database and continue with other tools. Many programs can make queries from PostGIS, for example QGIS, OpenJUMP, uDig and Kosmo GIS. If you prefer command line, you can use the GDAL utility program “ogr2ogr”
  • If you prefer command line, use GDAL v. 1.10 which comes with OSM driver http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_osm.html

Converting OSM highways into shapefiles goes like this:

  • Install GDAL 1.10. There are Linux packages around and for Windows use gisinternals http://gisinternals.com/sdk/
  • Read the GDAL manual page for OSM format
  • Check the osmconf.ini file from your gdal-data directoty and make sure that “highway” is included in the attributes so that the following SQL selection can work
  • Download data from your area from http://download.geofabrik.de/
  • run ogr2ogr as
ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" -sql "select * from lines where highway is not null" highways.shp finland-latest.osm.pbf"

Running this example took 8 minutes with my slow laptop from year 2006 and there are 565777 highway line strings in the resulting shapefile.

thank you for your replies… :)I am having a hard time to understand the tutorials because of the technical terms (i am new in this field), but still I will try to do it with your help thanks! Hoping for more help to come :smiley: