Import/Catalogue/Sweden Topography Import

UNDER DEVELOPMENT

The "Topografi 10" dataset became available as open data in Sweden in February 2025 when Lantmäteriet, the Swedish Mapping Authority, made it available under the EU Open Data Directive as High-Value Datasets. The dataset contains vector data used in the official topography map for Sweden from Lantmäteriet. This page describes the plan for making the data avilable for selective import into OSM.

Goals

The goals of this project are to:

• Make Lantmäteriet "Topografi 10" data available for OSM.
• Combine this data with other relevant data such as place names for lakes, rivers and islands.
• Selectively import the data to parts of Sweden in OSM, typically in areas which currently have very little mapping, mostly in the North of Sweden.

Schedule

• 2025-04-02 - 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 import for Sweden into OSM.

Import data

License information

• Data source site: Topografi 10 Nedladdning, vektor.
• Data license: CC-BY 4.0.
• Link to permission (if required): Explicit permission obtained by each individual user by application to Lantmäteriet.
• OSM attribution (if required): Lantmäteriet link.
• ODbL Compliance verified: General permission from Lantmäteriet to OSM is pending.

The datasets Topografi 50, Topografi 100 and Topografi 250, which are referenced on this page, are licensed by Lantmäteriet as CC0. Only Topografi 10 is considered to have sufficient detail and quality to be imported into OSM.

Source data

The source data is separated into a number of themes, or categories:

• Mark (land cover) - Land cover features such as wood, wetland, farmland and industrial/residential areas.
• Hydrografi (waterways) - Waterways.
• Anläggningsområde (structures) - Land uses for industry, leisure and public usage. Useful for airports and sport pitches/tracks.
• Höjd (elevation) - Mountains/peaks.
• Ledningar (power lines) - Power lines and transformer station areas.
• Byggnadsverk (buildings) - Special buildings/structures such as communication masts, towers, chimneys etc. Use building2osm to get buildings with better data.
• Kommunikation (communication) - Hiking related features such as routes and snowmobile trails. Use nvdb2osm to get highways with better data.
• Naturvård (protected nature) - National parks, nature reserves and other protected areas. Use reserve2osm to get protected areas with better data (to be extended for Sweden).
• Kulturhistorisk lämning (cultural relics) - Heritage and archeological sites. Only provided with raw geojson output. Only provided in Topo 50, 100, 250.

This import plan is focusing on the combination of Mark (land cover) and Hydrografi (waterways) plus associated place names. It is efficient to import them together because the waterways in Hydrografi are connected to the lakes and river polygons in Mark, and it is equally efficient to put names on these features before the import is carried out. Wetlands are a separate layer in Mark and is included in the import because wetland is frequently connected to water bodies (but not to other features).

An import may be supplemented with data from the other themes/categories, for example sports pitches may be imported from Anläggsområde (structures).

OSM data files

Examples of OSM files with tagging are available in the "Topo Sverige" folder. These files are generated from the Mark (landcover) and Hydrografi (waterway) themes above.

Data quality

The dataset is the official mapping data for Sweden, maintained by the Swedish Mapping Authority and cooperating public entities. Data quality is high in general.

As usual, there are a few issues to consider:

• Landcover data is maintained according to the schedules for renewal of orthophotos. Some areas are updated annualy, others are updated less frequently.
• Mountain areas are updated infrequently. Glaciers have likedly shrinked since last update.
• Constructions will have delayed updates in the dataset.
• The wetmark layer is in most cases aligned with lakes and rivers but it is only partly aligned with wood and other landcovers. (Wetland is well aligned in Topo 250, but not aligned at all in Topo 50 and Topo 100.)
• Some place names may have large gaps to the optimal location. Lakes and islands may have more than one name for different sections of the lake. Rivers may have differnt names along the full length of the river.
• A few topology inconsistencies may exist for certain multipolygons.

Import type

Similar topo imports have shown that it is very efficient if one person takes responsibility for one municipality and imports all features in the Mark and Hydrologi themes. This main reason is that features in these two themes are interconnected, so disentangling them quickly leads to a lot of extra work when they later need to be integrated again. Features from the other layers may be imported separately and selectively and by other people at other times.

In areas which already have been mapped extensively, typically in South Sweden, it will likely make more sense to selectively pick features which are missing in OSM.

No organized import activity is planned so far.

Data preparation

The source data is transformed by a python program, see topo2osm. Transformations are described below.

Tagging plans

The following tags are used for Mark and Hydrografi:

Source feature	OSM key	Comments
Sluten bebyggelse	landuse=retail	Urban/downtown area, often with retail shopping. Some areas will need manual retagging to landuse=residential.
Hög bebyggelse	landuse=residential	Residential area with high buildings.
Låg bebyggelse	landuse=residential	Residential area with low/suburban buildings.
Industri- och handelsbebyggelse	landuse=industrial	Industry and commercial area. Some areas will need manual retagging to landuse=commercial.
Åker	landuse=farmland	Farmland.
Fruktodling	landuse=orchard	Orchard.
Torg	place=square	Town square.
Barr- och blandskog	natural=wood	Mixed type wood. Wood in Sweden is typically regularly cut but has a natural appearance, not plantation forestery, therefore it is tagged with natural=wood. This is consistent with tagging in Norway and the majority of tagging in Finland.
Lövskog	landuse=forest + leaf_type=broadleaved	To be discussed: If mostly natural wood, then natural=wood + leaf_type=broadleaved is the alternative tagging.
Sjö	natural=water + water=lake	To be discussed: No water=lake tag for small water bodies. There are many thousand tiny water bodies.
Sjö + "reglerat vatten" attribute	natural=water + water=reservoir	There is also information about minimum elevation, used in the ele:min=* along ele=*.
Anlagt vatten	natural=water + water=pond	Small escavated water bodies.
Glaciär	natural=glacier	Note: Most glaciers are shrinking in size.
Sankmark, fast	natural=wetland + wetland=bog	Semi-dry wetland, turf. Normally possible to walk on.
Sankmark, våt	natural=wetland + wetland=marsh	Wet wetland, often filled with water. Includes marsh close to lakes. Normally difficult to walk on due to water.
Vattendrag	waterway=stream or waterway=river	Information from Topo 250 and Topo 100 is used to determine which waterways should be tagged as waterway=river. There are no center line ways within river polygons, except for rapids.
Vattendrag + "kanal" attribute	waterway=canal	Canal
Fors	waterway=rapids	Represented as midline ways within river polygons.
Vattenfall	waterway=waterfall	Represented as a node. May need to be relocated manually to a waterway line. Place names with "fallet" suffix will also generate a waterfall node.
Dammbyggnad	waterway=dam	Man made dam.
Pir	man_made=breakwater	Despite the name, this is a breakwater.
Kaj	man_made=quay	Man made structure along the shoreline designed to allow vessels of some size to moor alongside. Deep water and vertical side.
Brygga	man_made=pier	A long, narrow structure extending into the water to afford a berthing place for vessels. Fixed or floating. Despite the definition, a number of these features are mapped along the shoreline (not extending into the water) in cases where the structure is for smaller vessels than a quay.
Vattentub/vattenränna	man_made=pipeline + substance=water	Water pipelines. Usage unknown. A few of these features are lumber flumes or other flumes which needs to be tagged manually.
Islands, islets	place=island or place=islet	Not provided as separate features in the dataset, but identified in topology analysis across lakes, rivers and sea. Islands less than 100k m2 size are tagged as islets.

Two feature in the source data are not included in the import:

• "Kallfjäll" covers the highest areas, typically above 1000m. These areas do not have one homogeneous surface - they are a combination of cliffs, rocks, soil etc. Maps typically show them as "white" areas.
• "Fjällbjörkskog" covers some of the highest areas below Kallfjäll where low birch trees grow quite sparsely. Tagging is difficult - it is not a proper wood/forest, and not exactly scrub. Many mappers would likely not map these it at all because these areas are quite open.

Changeset Tags

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

description=Lantmäteriet topo import for <municipality>

source=Lantmäteriet

Data transformation

The following modifications are made to the dataset:

• The national dataset is clipped according to the selected municiaplity. Enclaves are excluded for simplification.
• All topo area features in the source data are represented as polygons. Polygons are transformed into OSM relations as needed when the polygons are touching. This is similar to for example the Norweigan topo import, but other countries map the polygons as ways with nodes overlapping other polygons. Both methods have drawbacks in terms of usability when editing later.
• All polygons in the source data are split according to a 10km x 10km grid. Topo areas which are adjacent along the grid lines are joined if they are of the same kind, except wood which is kept as grids due to the vast size of many wood areas.
• Waterway lines in the source data are short segments between intersections. Waterways segments which have the same "vattendrag id" are concatenated into longer ways.
• Islands and islets are identified and tagged according to a topology analysis across lakes, rivers and sea. Wetland in lakes are not considered islands.
• Place names are assigned to lakes, wetland, islands and glaciers if the place name location is within or close to these polygons. Lantmäteriet topo maps in the 250, 100, 50 and 10 series have been analysed to detmine how high in this map range each place name has been used. The place name with the highest rank (for example Topo 250) in this respect, and also in terms of how large letters were used on that map, is selected as the name for any given polygon. This method has proven to work well for islands, lakes and wetland. Alternative, names not chosen are kept as nodes for manual override, or in cases were it would be apropriate to split a polygon in two or more parts to better represent the physical feature.
• There is no information in Topology 10 which determines which waterways should be tagged as rivers, as opposed to streams. Instead waterway categories ("storleksklass") in Topo 100 and Topo 50 are used for indicating rivers. If these two additional datasets are not available, waterway place names which occure in Topo 250 and Topo 100 are used for indicating rivers.
• Place names with certain suffixes in Swedish, Sami or the Meänkieli language are used to fix name categories across lakes and rivers. Place names for the largest sea bodies ("Bottenviken", "Kattegat" etc) are excluded because they have multiple duplicates and are already mapped in OSM.
• All ways are simplified with a factor of 0.2.

Data merge workflow

Workflow

Preparations before the import:

1. Give a shout out at the Swedish community page that you are planning to import in a municipality.
2. Use topo2osm.py to produce an OSM file for the given municipality, or collect a file from the "Topo Sverige" folder. Use the -baynames (recommended) and/or -seanames to also get names for bays, straits and other water features.
3. Use "Lantmäteriet Topo" as background imagery.
4. In JOSM, search for water -river fixme:verify, put in the To-do plugin and check that the correct place name has been chosen for each lake. Delete nodes with the alternative name or tag them for example as natural=bay. Split the lake in two or more parts if appropriate.
5. Repeat for water -river fixme:choose, only in this case there were no clear priority among available names, so you need to decide.
6. Repeat foriisland or islet, glacier and for wetland.
7. Search for waterway fixme:split for splitting the waterway into approriate sections, each with correct name. Nodes with the available names are located along the waterway. The temporary key VATTENDRAG=* is used to facilitate locating long waterways across several segments.
8. Search for fixme:insert to adjust remaining place names for location and tagging. Temporary tags for T250, T100, T50 and T10 indicates relative importance of the place names.
9. Finally, hit the Validate button to check for errors and warnings. You may want to delay fixing overlapping nodes until the import step below, as this will make it easier to relocate individual polygons.
10. Remove uppercase tags and save the file.

The import:

1. Load the prepared file from above into JOSM.
2. Use "Lantmäteriet Topo" and aerials as background imagery.
3. Download the municipality into JOSM with this overpass query: natural=* or landuse=* or waterway=* or man_made=* in <municipailty>. Make sure that the second last Overpass line is exactly (._;>;<;); to get involved relations.
4. Divide the import into sections which can be handled in a session of around one hour.
5. Selectively add features from the import file, section by section. Replace existing features if the new data has higher quality. Use the Replace Geometry function in JOSM to maintain the version log of who and what has been mapped.
6. Hit the Validate button to check for errors and warnings.
7. Upload to OSM.
8. Fix any conflicts reported and upload again.
9. Repeat for next section to be uploaded.

Dedicated import accounts

Individual users will use their own account when uploading data.

See also

• "Topografi 10 Nedladdning, vektor" product description at Lantmäteriet Geotorget.
• "Topografi 10 Nedladdning, vektor" dataset order form (required permission) at Lantmäteriet Geotorget.
• topo2osm.py python conversion script at Github.
• "Topo Sverige" folder with example import files at Jottacloud.