Open Street Maps Syria Points of Interest

data/syria-poi.csv contains data from cultural/historical points of interest in Syria (1,982 in total). It was extracted from planet.osm as of June 5th, 2017. For a complete list of Open Street Maps tags used to extract these points, see the OSM Tags section below.

The code in this repository uses Osmosis to search for OSM nodes that match the specific OSM tags below using a polygon shape file of Syria as the "bounding box" (poly source here). It would be trivial to adapt query.sh to use different search criteria to meet your needs. See here for more info. I've written code that parses the resulting data/syria-poi.osm query into a CSV that includes only a subset of desirable fields. I've found the country/city data provided by OSM to be quite sparse, so I've ignored OSM's city and country fields and chosen to instead include results from a reverse geolookup by lat/long using the reverse-geocode python package.

If you wish to repeat this process, or run similar queries or convert OSM XML to CSV, see below.

Download

Open Street Maps planet data is ~54GB compressed, and ~751GB once uncompressed. Full planet files are made available weekly.

# clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/brannondorsey/osm-syria-poi

# navigate to the data folder
cd osm-syria-poi/data

# download the planet osm file
wget https://ftp5.gwdg.de/pub/misc/openstreetmap/planet.openstreetmap.org/planet/2017/planet-170102.osm.bz2

# you will likely need to install pbzip2 before running this command
# uncompress using 2GB of RAM (the max)
pbzip2 -d -m2000 planet-170102.osm.bz2

Osmosis can operate on .bz2 compressed OSM files, however this is not encouraged and unless disk space is a limited resource should be avoided.

Query

The official OSM query tool is a Java application called Osmosis. You must download and install it for your platform. Next we search for all museums in the world and output the results to an XML file called syria-poi.osm inside data/.

osmosis \
 --read-xml data/planet-170102.osm \
 --bounding-polygon file="data/syria.poly" \
 --tf accept-nodes amenity=library,arts_centre,fountain,planetarium,theatre,crypt,grave_yard,place_of_worship,ranger_station \
                   boundary=national_park,protected_area \
                   building=cathedral,chapel,church,mosque,temple,synagogue,shrine,conservatory,greenhouse,pavilion,ruins \
                   geological=palaeontological_site \
                   historic=aircraft,aqueduct,archaeological_site,battlefield,boundary_stone,building,cannon,castle,city_gate,citywalls,farm,fort,gallows,locomotive,manor,memorial,milestone,monastery,monument,pillory,railway_car,ruins,rune_stone,ship,tomb,wayside_cross,wayside_shrine \
                   landuse=cemetery \
                   leisure=garden,nature_reserve,park,wildlife_hide \
                   man_made=bridge,campanile,cross,lighthouse,obelisk,observatory,tower \
                   tourism=aquarium,artwork,attraction,gallery,zoo \
 --tf reject-ways \
 --tf reject-relations \
 --write-xml data/syrian_poi.osm

The above command is also the contents of query.sh. So you can instead run ./query.sh for convenience. See here for full Osmosis usage documentation.

Convert to CSV (and augment location using geolookup)

osm2csv.py is a python program to convert osm file (that are the result of query.sh) to csv. Before running this program you must install the necessary dependencies.

pip install numpy scipy reverse_geocode unicodecsv

To convert and augment geo location data, run:

python osm2csv.py --input data/syria-poi.osm --output data/syria-poi.csv

OSM Tags

Below is a list of Open Street Maps tags used in query.sh.

Amenity

• Library
• Arts_centre
• Fountain
• Planetarium
• Theatre
• Crypt
• Grave_yard
• Place_of_worship
• Ranger_station

Boundary

• National_park
• Protected_area

Building

• Cathedral
• Chapel
• Church
• Mosque
• Temple
• Synagogue
• Shrine
• Conservatory
• Greenhouse
• Pavilion
• Ruins

Geological

• Palaeontological_site

Historic

• Aircraft
• Aqueduct
• Archaeological_site
• Battlefield
• Boundary_stone
• Building
• Cannon
• Castle
• City_gate
• Citywalls
• Farm
• Fort
• Gallows
• Locomotive
• Manor
• Memorial
• Milestone
• Monastery
• Monument
• Pillory
• Railway_car
• Ruins
• Rune_stone
• Ship
• Tomb
• Wayside_cross
• Wayside_shrine

Landuse

• Cemetery

Leisure

• Garden
• Nature_reserve
• Park
• Wildlife_hide

Man_made

• Bridge
• Campanile
• Cross
• Lighthouse
• Obelisk
• Observatory
• Tower

Tourism

• Aquarium
• Artwork
• Attraction
• Gallery
• Museum
• Zoo