Import/Catalogue/Sweden Place Name Import

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Official place names became available as open data in Sweden in February 2025 when Lantmäteriet, the Swedish Mapping Authority, published the dataset under the EU Open Data Directive as a High-Value Dataset. The dataset contains names of villages, water, rivers, peaks and other topography features. There are 970k place names in the dataset. This page describes the plan to make the dataset available for OSM uses.

Goals

The goal of this import is to make official Swedish place names available for OSM users. There is no plan for an organized import.

Schedule

  • 2025-02-11 - Import plan discussed in the Swedish OSM community.
  • 2025-0x-xx - Import plan submitted to the OSM community for review.
  • 2025-0x-xx - Start of using names in the dataset in OSM.

Import data

Source information

  • Data source site: Lantmäteriet product page
  • Data license: CC-BY 4.0.
  • Type of license (if applicable): CC-BY 4.0.
  • Link to permission (if required): Link to terms and conditions.
  • OSM attribution (if required): Lantmäteriet link.
  • ODbL Compliance verified: Explicit permission obtained by each user after application. User should state that the data will be used in OSM. General, explicit permission for OSM is pending.

OSM data files

GeoJSON files with OSM tagging have been gernerated and are available in the Ortnamn Sweden folder. There is one file per municipality as well as one full Sweden file.

Data quality

The source is the official Swedish registry for place names, maintained by the Swedish Mapping Authority. Many names were collected from (now historic) official maps.

Please note:

  • There are many duplicates, likely due to original data collection from multiple maps of the same area.
  • Some features such as rivers may have names at multiple locations along the river.
  • Some features such as villages may have place names located to the side of village, likely due to the original location on the map.
  • Names are usually at least 30 years old when entered into the place name registry, which means new names may not be present.
  • The dataset does not contain alternative names (for the same feature/record).

Import type

There is no organized import. The data is made available for individual contributors in their projects. For example, lake names could be added to lakes, river names to rivers etc.

Data preparation

Data reduction and simplification

The source data is avilable as one GeoPackage file for all of Sweden. This file is loaded into JOSM using the OpenData plugin and stored as a geojson file. A script is then doing the following transformations:

  • Records with identical id's are combined - they contain multiple names for the same feature in different languages.
  • Each language is tagged with name:xxx according to the table below.
  • A name=* tag is generated with one name for each language if other than Swedish names are present.

Tagging plans

The buildings are tagged according to this table:

Feature OSM tagging Comment
Place name identifier ref:lm_ortnamn=* Identifier used in Lantmäteriet source database ("löpnummer"). Will be used for tracking the import and for later updates.
Place name name:xxx The name in given language, tagged according to the following translation from source codes:
  • SV: name:sv=* - Swedish (svenska)
  • TF: name:fit=* - Tornedal Finnish (meänkieli)
  • FI: name:fi=* - Finnish (finska)
  • NS: name:se=* - North sami (nordsamiska)
  • LS: name:smj=* - Lule sami (lulesamiska)
  • US: name:sju=* - Ume sami (umesamiska)
  • SS: name:sma=* - South sami (sydsamiska)
Place name name=* Contains all names in all languages separated by " - " if other languages than Swedish are present. Order between languages as in the list above.
Feature type DETALJTYP=* Description of feature type translated from the following source codes (should not be imported):
  • ANLTX - Man made feature (anläggning)
  • BEBTX - Residential area (bebyggelse)
  • BEBTÄTTX - Village (tätort)
  • GLACIÄRTX - Glacier (glaciär)
  • KOMMUNTX - Municipality (kommun)
  • KULTURTX - Heritage place (kulturhistorisk lämning)
  • KYRKATX - Church (kyrka)
  • NATTX - Protected area (skyddat område)
  • SANKTX - Wetmark (sankmark)
  • SOCKENTX' - District (socken)
  • TERRTX - Topography (terräng)
  • TRAKTTX - Quarter (trakt)
  • VATTDELTX - Water part (del av vatten)
  • VATTDRTX - Waterway (vattendrag)
  • VATTTX - Lake (sjö)
Municipality KOMMUN=* Present in the full Sweden file (should not be imported).

Changeset Tags

When uploading to OSM, the changesets will be tagged with:

description=Lantmäteriet place name import or similar
source=Lantmäteriet Ortnamn

Data transformation

A python program has been made to generate files for the import. The program handles the following tasks:

  • Combines names in multiple languages for the same feature into one record.
  • Tags name according to tagging table above.
  • Saves in GeoJSON format for Sweden + one file per municipality.

Data merge workflow

Team approach

There is no organized import. The data is made available for individual contributors and their projects. For example, lake names could be added to lakes, river names to rivers etc.

Workflow

Workflow will depend on the task at hand. A user may for example extract lake names from the file of one municipality and conflate with the lakes of that municipality.

Please respect names already given by other mappers, as alternative names/spelling may be acceptable.

Remember to delete the capital letter tags before uploading.

See also

Retrieved from "https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Import/Catalogue/Sweden_Place_Name_Import&oldid=2811453"