Main article: Potential Datasources

In addition to the "general" data sources on first page Potential Datasources, this page lists "local" data sources by country.

Due to its length, the main page was split into two on January 29, 2022.

The following is a list of potential datasources. Some of these are already in use, or have been imported fully. Others are under investigation, and some have been rejected (details of rejections are on here too). There are basically two criteria:

Licenses - We are only interested in 'free' data. In fact we must be able to release their data with our OpenStreetMap License. This means it's OK to use Public Domain data; for other sources, please check license compatibility. (Overview: Category:Data Licenses)

Accuracy/Quality - All GIS data is limited in terms of accuracy and coverage of features. Some datasources are very basic. Because of our wiki style map building approach, this isn't necessarily a problem. We could import it anyway, and improve it later. However there are limits to this reasoning, it does for example require active OSM community members for the area affected. Also in areas where we already have superior coverage through other means, we will not be interested in importing lower quality data. For example a low accuracy map of the main roads of London, is actually useless to us, whereas similar coverage of an unmapped city would be useful.

With these criteria in mind, look at the following, see if there are license issues and if they are useful to us or we can collaborate, and mail the Mailing lists with results.

Listing datasources here is only the first stage in a careful investigation/planning process for imports. If you're interested in performing imports please be aware:

Imports and automated edits should only be carried out by those with experience and understanding of the way the OpenStreetMap community creates maps, and only with careful planning and consultation with the local community.
See Import/Guidelines and Automated Edits code of conduct for more information. Imports/automated edits which do not follow these guidelines might be reverted!

Datasources which we have imported should also go on the Import/Catalogue. We also have a list of Related Projects

Local data

Argentina

IDERA (Spatial Data Infrastructure of the Argentinian Republic)

Visualizator

IGN (National Geographic Institute)

MAPEAR (Unfree)

Nothing in the project MAPEAR should be used since their license is not compatible. Although their maps are free as in beer they are not free as in speech.

Austria

Obsolete - everything of value is already at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors#Austria

Australia

Old Australia maps

ACT - GDA94/AHD) (Unfree)

This only covers the ACT (Australian Capital Territory), which is only a few 100km sq.

http://www.ga.gov.au/nmd/products/digidat/100k.htm

Currency: 2005.

Coordinates: Geographical.

Datum: Geocentric Datum of Australia (GDA94), Australian Height Datum (AHD).

Format: ESRI Personal Geodatabase Version 8.3, ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo mid/mif and ER Mapper Compressed Wavelet (ECW) Raster.

Medium: Online Download (free) or Packaged CD-ROM ($99).

Belgium

See WikiProject Belgium/Mapping resources.

Bolivia

GeoBolivia

Data under Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL), although it requires citing the source (which can be done as source=geo.gob.bo).

Bosnia and Herzegovina

The United States Geological Survey has made 1:50000 topographical maps of Balkan peninsula countries. These maps are US Federal Government works and are in the public domain in the USA (see copyright statement here: [2]) and probably in most other countries of the world. The maps are provided as PDF-files from The University of Texas Libraries here. Not all maps have been scanned so far, but at least significant parts of the Former Yugoslavian countries, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia are available (coverage: [3]).

The WikiProject Croatia (osm-hr) project have converted the PDF-files in the slippy map format such that the maps can easily be used as backgrounds in JOSM or Potlatch 2. Be careful since some parts of the maps are old and might also have a significant wrong offset.

JOSM: Go to Edit, Preferences, WMS TMS. Add a TMS-source and specify the URL: http://tms.osm-hr.org/1.0.0/all_ustopo/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

Potlatch 2: Go to Background, Edit and insert the line: http://tms.osm-hr.org/1.0.0/all_ustopo/$z/$x/$y.png

Thanks to Janko for posting this information ([4]), to dodobas for geocoding the PDFs, to hbogner at the Faculty of Geodesy in Zagreb and of course to the US Federal government for creating the maps!

Brazil

Suitable sources

IBGE Stated to be public domain data [5], although it requires citing the source (which can be done as source=IBGE)

Projeto Geominas (dead link) Public domain data (citation needed) on Minas Gerais state. Created by the state government, includes geographical, administrative and climatic data.

Águas Paraná Created by the state of Paraná this data is allowed to use (citation needed) if it's tagged with source=Águas Paraná

DNIT Confirmed to be PD by email, citation needed, source=DNIT

Uncertain sources

Other public and governmental sources - Much of the geographical and statistical data from Federal, state and municipal sources is believed to be under public domain, although no law affirms that (see Wikipédia). One possibility is to proceed on a case-by-case basis: to contact any potential sources, inform about OSM, and ask directly for a statement as to whether the data is free/open/PD.

Any other map or source available under unknown licensing terms.

GeoLISTA^[1]

Unsuitable sources

Tracksource (tracksource.org.br - Released under CC-BY-NC-ND, therefore incompatible with OSM license due to restrictive distribution for commercial proposes as well as for derivative works. See the bottom of TrackSource about page.

Any other map or source available under restrictive licenses.

Canada

Federal (Open Government)

Canadian Open Government Licence has been approved as compatible with ODbL by the Licence Working Group (LWG). The different products offered under prior licences (GeoBase, CanVec, GeoGratis, Statistic Canada, …) are now available under the new licence. All available products can be obtained from the Open Government Portal. Numerous datasets are available but searching for them is very messy. The location of these products (http ...) changes regularly. Therefore, the portal is still the best place to go. Search parameters to use in their Portalare identified below for some interesting datasets.

Building Footprints

Select Organization: Natural Resources Canada
Search for: Building Footprints

Select Organization: Statistic Canada
Search for: Building Footprints
See The_Open_Database_of_Buildings wiki page.

Road Network

Select Organization: Statistics Canada
Search for: National Road Network

Rail Network

Select Organization: Natural Resources Canada
Search for: National Rail Network

Hydrographic Network

Select Organization: Natural Resources Canada
Search for: National Hydro Network - NHN - GeoBase Series

Topographic maps

Select Organization: Natural Resources Canada
Search for: Topographic Data of Canada - CanVec Series

The original CanVec datasets are still available in OSM format. See the canvec wiki page for further details.

Provincial

GeoBC Data Delivery Service

GeoBC Home Page

Land Information Ontario

40 datasets are available see Land Information Ontario

Regional

Region of Peel, ON

http://opendata.peelregion.ca/terms-of-use.aspx - the region's licence is a modified version of the UK Government's Open Government Licence for Public Sector
Unsure if compatible with OSM --Kevo 18:58, 6 October 2012 (BST)

Regina

http://openregina.cloudapp.net/ Open Government data for the City of Regina
One user has already uploaded bus stops & routes
Other published data includes addresses (nodes), communities, subdivisions, rail and pathways
City is confirming ownership of building shape data and will make it available if permitted.

Toronto

Toronto Open Data was confirmed as usable by OSM with suitable attribution on 2012-02-13 by city employee Reham Gorgis in the DataTO Google Group.^[2] --Scruss (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Montreal QC

The city of Montreal (Quebec) has a dedicated website for open data sources provided by its departments, the data is licenced under the Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 and has an explicit permission for OSM import.

OGL-BC 2.0-equivalent sources

Each of these cities and regional districts have made data available under their own licence. All of these licences are based on the Open Government Licence - British Columbia 2.0, which is an approved licence. However, only some of these licences have been approved for usage by LWG and some still need to be approved as compatible. (more info)

Approved:

Unapproved:

OGL Canada 2.0-equivalent sources in BC

Approved:

Surrey (Surrey data was under PDDL until 2013)

Unapproved:

Sunshine Coast Regional District

The Sunshine Coast Regional District has an open data portal under it own licence which has been confirmed compatible. It has addresses, bridges, fire hydrants, parcels, lakes, land use, parks, trails, roads, and streams for the area.

Halifax Regional Municipality

Halifax Regional Municipality Open Data Catalogue has a bunch of map data sets, released under a non-OSM compatible licence.

Active Travelways
Building Footprints
Building Types
Catchbasins
Civic Adresses
Dry Hydrants
Fire Hydrant
HRM Park Recreation Features
Intersection Points
Parks
Street Centre Lines
Trails

Winnipeg MB

Winnipeg Open data website: data.winnipeg.ca; Open Government Licence – Winnipeg[6]
Winnipeg Transit Open Data Web Service: api.winnipegtransit.com; Open Data Commons PDDL[7]; Terms of Use[8]

Airdrie AB

The City of Airdrie GIS Department has a number of datasets available under an Open Data Licence

Calgary AB

Calgary has an Open Data Portal with an Open Government Licence

Central Africa

WRI Forest Atlases

World Resources Institute has liberated data from its Forest Atlas for

Cameroon,
Central African Republic,
Democratic Republic of Congo,
Equatorial Guinea,
Gabon and
Republic of Congo

covering Conservation, Exploitation, Forest Allocation, Forest Infrastructure, Administrative Units, Habitat, Agriculture, Hydrography, Mining, Vegetation under ODbL licence

Cameroon

INC

Institut National de Cartographie:

Raster data for North and Far North of Cameroon has been liberated under ODbL license. (Comment: Is there a source for that? No website of INC available)

NASPW

The National Advanced School of Public Works (NASPW)

Has made available some data in the project GeoCameroun. Data produced by students from 2010 to 2012 on Yaoundé.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Congo (Dem. Rep.)RGC

Référentiel Géographique Commun (http://rgc.cd/):

les données du RGC sont libres d'utilisation mais nous vous demandons de citer les sources : « Ces données géographiques proviennent du Référentiel Géographique Commun (www.rgc.cd) ».

see here what is done and what not: Congo-Kinshasa#RGC

China (People's Republic of)

Data from the PRC government are legaly exempt of copyright restrictions. See Copyright in the PRC.

Colombia

Colombia passed an Open Data law in 2014, and since then some cities have made some really useful stuff available. Some of that is CC-By-SA, though, so we'll have to get permission to use it under the ODBL.

SHP files including all of the buildings of Bogotá, with number of floors for each part - perfect for 3D.
CSV with addresses and usage codes for all the buildings of Bogotá, with codes that we can use to correlate with the above data.
Open Data Law (Spanish): PDF

European Union

TMC LocationTables

The national LocationCodeLists of the TMC (Traffic Message System = traffic-jam warning via radio) -system contain a highly simplified road-network of all the major roads and many important points in the country. The location-codes themself are also highly useful to have in OSM for Routing -software that can receive TMC-messages and thus avoid traffic jams and other obstructions.

These lists are sometimes free to use, sometimes closed but due to the fact that they are widely distributed with all commercial navigation-systems, there may be little resistance in getting a permission to tag existing OSM-objects with their location-code or use the list to check for missing ways in our map.

European Environment Agency (EEA)

European Environment Agency offers data for commercial reuse. Here are potential GIS vector data to be imported:

Nationally designated areas (CDDA)

This is about nature conservation - protected areas:

national parks
nature parks
etc.

A shapefile is provided with latest data of 2011: CDDA_v9_polygons.zip

Via Alpina dataset on accommodation in the Alps

See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Authorisation_ViaAlpina_OSM_accomodation.png

638 accommodation places, many attributes. Dataset in 5 languages. Example: http://www.via-alpina.org/point/1598

The origin (licence) and accuracy of the location is uncertain, so better to use the attributes only. Part of the data is already outdated, so it is advised to check first (maybe by calling). In Italy at least, the '0' (zero) after +39 is missing in the online phone numbers (but GSM lines do not have zeroes).

(Do not hesitate to contact me or the Via Alpina international secretary for more details Mayeul 18:03, 31 May 2012 (BST))

Finland

Maastotietokanta

The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) has recently (1 May 2012) opened some of its dataset under an attribution only -licence. The amount of data available is enormous, and the local community is discussing the details.

digiroad

The Finnish Road Administration (Tiehallinto) maintains a database called digiroad covering all roads and streets in Finland which would contain all information OpenStreetMap needs about roads for Finland. (Shorelines, parks, amenities, boundaries, placenames, etc would still have to be collected using traditional OSM procedures.) The database is available for licensing relatively cheap, a few hundred euro. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, it is not currently licensed under terms suitable for OpenStreetMap. The English summary document says that "Data from Digiroad will be free-of-charge for public organisations for internal use and for free public services" but I couldn't find anything as promising in the more recent Finnish documentation.

However, my (naïve?) hope is that it will eventually be possible to convince them to "open up" the data enough for OpenStreetMap. Clearly digiroad is not maintained and sold for profit, there aren't even any royalty fees collected from commercial users of the data.

I mailed the project coordinator asking for more information. The coordinator had changed from that mentioned on their webpage to another person though, though, but I did eventually get a reply from her. Basically it was quite positive, but they need time to consider this. They also interpret current regulations as allowing them to sell (for the very reasonable amount) the material only to companies and institutions, not to individuals. Also the data should be used to benefit "services for transport and logistics" (badly translated from the vague term "liikkumisen palvelut"), but on the other hand, what else could it be used for? (Maybe the intent of this restriction is to prevent production of pure maps from the data. That would then indeed seriously prevent importing it into OSM, I think.)

I sent more mail asking for clarifications, pointing out that the price as such is not the issue here, surely it would be possible to collect for instance 20 euros per person from a group of interested individuals, or even ask some company to "sponsor" freeing this data. The licensing issues are the main concern. No further replies yet.

I hacked together some code to convert the sample data available from the website [9] (sorry, documentation in Finnish and Swedish only) into OSM format. See here: [10]. Plain C. Needs shapelib and iconv(), otherwise no external dependencies. Screenshot of part of sample data loaded into JOSM here: [11].

--Tml 09:33, 24 September 2007 (BST)

The Finnish page says that the licensing conditions are formed to match client requirements so it should be possible to get a good license. Then the only problem would be their fee (about €380) which mandated by law. --LH 15:11, 9 September 2007 (BST)

No fee anymore for Digiroad, and data is available currently from FTP server (need to request access still, though), and should be available from some "downloading service" by the end of this year. --Vessep (talk) 09:25, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Download service now open here, in Finnish only --Vessep (talk) 06:44, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Reading the contract details, the licence gives you the right to use the data for a certain purpose for a maximum of 5 years. After the 5 year period the copy must be returned or destroyed. I recommend reading the example contract.

RHK

The Finnish Rail Administration possibly has exact geodata for all of the state-owned rail network. With rail deregulation being implemented and all, they seem to be quite open, and publish lots of information on the web, including a very detailled "Network Statement". Alas, this document doesn't include coordinates of stations etc, only the distance (down to one metre resolution) along the rails from the designated point of origin. (Trivia: this point of origin is the previous Helsinki station, 159m south of the present Helsinki Central station, and not actually accessible by rail.) I mailed then asking if the network geodata (and useful other information, like number of tracks and electrification) could be made available in some suitable format and could be donated to OSM. They didn't promise anything except that maybe in the next "Network Statement" they will include actual coordinates. So probably it doesn't make sense to wait for something that might not happen, but continue mapping rail lines as before.

They have an interactive web service that contains information for all level crossings in Finland. For many of the crossings coordinates are included (in the Finnish national KKJ grid, not WGS84, but conversion formulae are well-known) . From this service one could semi-mechanically generate an at least partially quite accurate (for those lines that have plenty of level crossings) map of the rail network. This might be interesting especially for freight-only lines where actual GPS mapping of course is hard to do (without actually trekking along the line). Data for one level crossing here: [12]. Their reply to my mail was a bit vague but I got the impression that it should be OK to import the level crossing locations. The location of an individual crossing is obviously not a copyrightable work, but as a collection it is covered by copyright for databases and collections.

--Tml 08:28, 25 October 2007 (BST)

City of Tampere

The City of Tampere has published a number of datasets (and plans to publish more) under an attribution-only license which might be compatible with our license. If it's not, they just might relicense the data for us under ODbL if we ask nicely.

Data that might be relevant here includes bus routes, bus stop locations, hiking paths, pier locations, statistical data and zoning area boundaries.

Addendum: This license is very similar to the MML (NLS) open data license, except instead of a share-alike provision, there is only an attribution provision - which may mean (disclaimer: IANAL) the data can be relicensed under ODbL. —Joemppe 00:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

City of Turku

Turku has opened quite a bit of data as CC-By 4.0 with an OSM waiver. Since OSM is otherwise reasonably good around here, but lacks lot of building address data, the address dataset is particularly interesting. --Ilmaisin (talk) 22:43, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

ODA Self care and digital value services

The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) maintains a registry for all public and private social and health care providers. The registry includes various information about the providers, such as their name and address. Interesting is also the type of the provider, indicating if the provider is a social services or health services provider, or both.

From this information one can using geocoding create a set of locations for the registered providers, including their type. Geocoding can be done using the Digitransit service that maintains data on OSM as well.

The registry is available on the Code Service licensed under CC BY 4.0. Written permission to use the data has been obtained. THL requires an attribution on the copyright page.

Public transport (GTFS) data sources

There are several public transport authorities in Finland providing stop, route and timetable information as open data, usually licensed CC-BY 4.0 and in GTFS format.

HSL (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa etc.): http://dev.hsl.fi/gtfs/hsl.zip Got permission to use. See also Finland:Joukkoliikenne/HSL.
LSL (Lahti and surroundings): http://www.lsl.fi/lisatietoa/avoin-data/
Tampereen joukkoliikenne (Licensed under "Tampere City Open Data License"): http://wiki.itsfactory.fi/index.php/Tampere_Public_Transport_GTFS_feed
TSJL (Turku): http://data.foli.fi/doc/index
Jyväskylä: http://data.jyvaskyla.fi/data.php
Kuopio: http://vilkku.kuopio.fi/mobiilisovellukset
Vaasa: https://www.avoindata.fi/data/fi/dataset/vaasan-seudun-joukkoliikenteen-linja-autojen-aikataulu-ja-pysakkitiedot
Oulu: https://data.ouka.fi/data/dataset/oulun-liikenteen-liikennointidata-gtfs

France

France has its own page: Potential Datasources/France.

Germany

Germany has its own wiki page

Greece

Geodata is the official governmental site that provides open geospatial data and services for Greece, serving as a national open data catalogue, an INSPIRE-conformant Spatial Data Infrastructure, as well as a powerful foundation for enabling value added services from open data.

Athens Urban Transport Organisation (AUTO) has released useful information under Creative Commons License (CC BY v.3.0) at http://geodata.gov.gr/en/dataset/oasa . Data is almost up to date, but it is clearly stated in the context that data is subject to change without any warning or liability of OASA (AUTO), OSY (Road Transportation) or STASY (Railway Transportation). Moreover "the data accuracy is limited, because digitalization hasn't been based on descriptive data". Be aware that real bus stop positions may vary between ±20m. in urban areas and more that 50m. in suburban areas.

The files available as downloads on this site are in .XML, .shp, .gml & .KML formats. No CSV files are available, you'll have to convert them yourself. The site is in Greek (language) so you'll have to use a translator service to make "lat & long" of the site. Easy enough to navigate if you know what you're looking for, otherwise not a particularly user friendly site. Amendment: OSM requirements are met.

Another valuable resource site hosting various databases for Greece is http://datahub.io/group/country-gr?page=1. A wide range of data-sets are available. Sources are varied, thus the available database file formats differ from set to set. File formats include .CSV, .KML, .XML, .shp, .gml & .ods. Each database has its own license, therefore no comment can be made about OSM requirements. The site is in English (language) & provides an efficient filter for various attributes. A downloading feature is available as is a preview of the relevant file. The original links are available which in most instances are hosted by Greek Government site mentioned earlier.

A site providing info regarding postcodes in Greece is http://www.elta.gr/en-us/findapostcode.aspx . The interface is not very helpful, because it is mainly an address name search engine, but if you are interested for a particular known address, it can precisely give you the corresponding postcode. The English version above accepts transliterated data (Greeklish). However, a native language version is also available at http://www.elta.gr/el-gr/εύρεσηταχκώδικα.aspx

Honduras

Administrative boundaries for Honduras are available at www.sinit.hn/index.php. This data is public domain.

India

Indian Village Boundaries http://projects.datameet.org/indian_village_boundaries/ (All our work will be under Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). )

Italy

More information in the Italian page.

Agenzia del territorio

Lists containing street-names for all of the italian municipalities, grouped by province, are available for download. For each street-name, the pertaining municipality is identified by its cadastral code (vecchio codice catastale). Check the list of italian cadastral codes for interpretation.

License need to be clarified. Helpful for quality assurance checks. Data might be partly outdated.

Istat

Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT) has granted to OSM the use of the following data:

Administrative Borders: the shapefile provided contain the so called generalized borders, which are a simplified version of the official borders. The version dated 2001 has already been fully imported (more information on a dedicated page). Currently a new version dated 2008/12/31 is available.
A list of geographical coordinates of Italian localities. Files and related information are made available by GFOSS from a dedicated page.

A list of Italian municipalities is also available for download.

Portale Cartografico Nazionale

For the whole of Italy there is a WMS server. In 2010 use of 2 WMS-layers for OSM was explicitly permitted (orthographic photos from 2006 for the whole of Italy and from 2008 covering only the regions Lazio and Umbria) (see authorization letter from the PCN). The rest of the information on the PCN is not free to use for OSM as of May 2010. For more information and instructions how to use the aerial imagery, please visit WikiProject_Italy/PCN in Italian language. These photos offer (almost) complete coverage and are much better aligned than Bing aerial, but Bing has higher resolution and is more up to date so if you want to use aerial imagery for mapping in Italy you should probably use both sources.

Post

A list of Italian postal codes is provided by the Free Software Foundation Europe. It includes the list of street-names for major cities.

Regione Autonoma Friuli-Venezia-Giulia

All of the data created and maintained by the Regional Administration

Regione Lombardia

Regione Lombardia has its own wiki page

Regione Piemonte

The Regione Piemonte has put data from their stock online at [13] These include a detailed DEM and the CTRN for the whole of Piemonte down to 1:10000 resolution. Some of the data are quite old, but potentially still extremely useful (e.g. for streams, toponyms). The data are under various CC licenses. No permission to use the data in OSM has yet been requested or given.

Regione Toscana

Over 150 layers are available through a public WMS service named Geoscopio. More details here: Toscana#GEOscopio_WMS.

Japan

Kadena Air Base

Running map US Government created
Kadena Air Base Map

KSJ

National-Land Information Office, a section of National and Regional Planning Bureau(NRPB), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport(MLIT), Japan, provides some geo data. http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/

Licenses – IMPORTANT: KSJ IS PROHIBITED TO USE AFTER 2015 DUE TO THEIR LICENSE CHANGE Their terms of use is written in Japanese; a summary in English is as follows.

2-3. If you reproduce the National-Land Information or create derivative works, you must do a citation of the source (e.g., "「国土数値情報（○○データ）　国土交通省」", a literal translation, National-Land Numerical Information (XX Data), MLIT Japan).
3-1. You may use the National-Land Information free of charge.
4. Disclaimer. MLIT Japan makes no warranty on your use of the National-Land Information.

Accuracy/Quality – Almost National-Land Numerical Information is based on "Map 25000" and "Map 50000" by Geographical Survey Institute (GSI) Japan. Files are in KSJ original format and datum is Japanese Geodetic Datum 2000 (JGD2000) which is based on ITRF94 and GRS80.

This is the old data of KSJ2 and it have some type of data which KSJ2 doesn't have, e.g. road, submarine cable　and power line, cultural properties, etc.

KSJ2

Their license prohibit to use as business, so we cannot import KSJ2 data source.

http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/ksj/

National-Land Information Office, a section of National and Regional Planning Bureau(NRPB), Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport(MLIT), Japan, provides some geo data. See KSJ2 page.

ISJ

National-Land Information Office, a section of NRPB, MLIT Japan, provides place reference information in city block level for many (not all) municipalities. http://nlftp.mlit.go.jp/isj/

Licenses – Their terms of use is written in Japanese; a summary in English is as follows.

2-3. If you reproduce the place reference information or create derivative works, you must do a citation of the source (e.g., "「街区レベル位置参照情報　国土交通省」", a literal translation, City Block Level Place Reference Information, MLIT Japan).
3-1. You may use the place reference information free of charge.
4. Disclaimer. MLIT Japan makes no warranty on your use of the place reference information.

Accuracy/Quality – Place reference information is based on "Numerical Map 2500" by Geographical Survey Institute (GSI) Japan. Files are in CSV(Comma Separated Values) format, SHIFT-JIS encoding and datum is Japanese Geodetic Datum 2000 (JGD2000) which is based on ITRF94 and GRS80.

I guess we can use this data like CC-BY/CC-BY-SA data as imported before. -- Tatata 10:52, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Orthophoto (MLIT Japan)

National-Land Information Office, a section of NRPB, MLIT Japan, provides aerial photography for old survey with WMS. Web (Japanese only)

Licenses – Their terms of use is written in Japanese; a summary in English is as follows.

2. Notices
- 3. If you republish the data or create derivative works, you must do a citation of the source (e.g., "「国土画像情報（オルソ化空中写真）　国土交通省」", a literal translation, National Land Imaginary Information (Orthophoto), MLIT Japan). Recode information of the photograph's taken date, digitized date and the file name, and editors' names as long as possible.

3. availability
1. Anyone is allowed to use national land information by free for charge, except fees for communication, etc.
2. Read well this term of use. You needed to agree this term of use before you use it.
3. If you use this information, you are regarded to agree the term of use.

4. Disclaimer
- MLIT Japan makes no warranty on your use of the place reference information.

5. Notes
- This term of use could be changed without any notices.

User:ikiya confirmed to the office that we can use the aerial photography to draw our map with the following annotations [14]:

source:ja=国土画像情報（オルソ化空中写真）国土交通省
source=MLIT Japan

The URL of WMS:

http://orthophoto.mlit.go.jp:8888/wms/service/wmsRasterTileMap?SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetCapabilities

We have got another confirmation for the first and the second derivative works form the orthophotos.[15] OpenStreetMap data directly generated from the orthophotos must show "国土画像情報（オルソ化空中写真）国土交通省" in the data browser of www.openstreetmap.org. The source tag is useful for it. Then, for the second derivative works, which means works derived form OpenStreetMap data, must show "(C) OpenStreetMap" and make a web link to https://www.openstreetmap.org/ . That is the same with Our License.

Lawson

Data provided by Lawson, Japan

Open Data Catalog Shizuoka

http://open-data.pref.shizuoka.jp/

It is called "Fuji-no-kuni Open Data Catalog" which is a nickname. The site is operated by Shizuoka prefecture, and data provided Shizuoka prefecture or cities in Shizuoka prefecture.

Licenses - CC BY 2.1 JP

Individual data is indicated to another page, Open Data Catalog Shizuoka. (in Japanese)

GTFS data sets of bus

Following is the list of links and license information on GTFS datasets of bus operators in Japan.

https://tshimada291.sakura.ne.jp/transport/gtfs-list.html

Licenses - Public domain (CC0), CC-BY-2.1 JP, CC-BY-4.0, etc.

Latvia

Maps 1:50000 (200x?) and 1:250000 (2020) from Latvian cartographic authority (LGIA)https://www.lgia.gov.lv/lv/kartes

License is CC0. Maps are really good, contain many different features, roads, buldings, natural stuff, etc. 1:50000 map is somewhat old, but still very valuable.

Data is in ArcGIS and geojson formats. OSM would benefit greatly from import of this data.

Planning for initial prototyping stages happens in official mailing list for Latvia - talk-lv@openstreetmap.org , coordinator is vlad@izvne.com

There is other data, too.

https://www.lgia.gov.lv/en/atvertie-dati

Other open data sources that can be used with some benefits (most are CC0).

https://data.gov.lv/dati/eng/dataset?q=celi

Notably, there are LVM (Latvia's State Forests) roads and LVC (Latvian State Roads) official roads, and some others.

Luxembourg

Luxembourgish Open Data Platform

Most data is licensed as CC0.

Mexico

INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía)

On september 2014 it was officially released the Normative for Open Data published by INEGI (Mexico’s Equivalent of USGS+US Census Bureau, or Brazil’s IBGE).

The release was published in the Official Gazette of the Federation, which is the main official government publication in Mexico. The importance of this is that the main rules and regulations of the three branches of the federal government are published on this Gazette. It’s a mandate that all official government rules and regulations to be published on it, and so only through this publication that compliance of any law in Mexico becomes mandatory. Once a law or regulation is published on this journal, ignorance of it is no longer a legal defense.

The terms of use for the information released by INEGI make that information open even for commercial use (with only the requirement of attribution, when technically feasible). This means anyone can use the geographic data released by this institute and import it to OpenStreetMap without incurring on any violation of a license, individuals and companies can use the information for any purpose as long as it follows the terms of use for open data issued by the Mexican government which means they should be released under the following terms:

Of the Open Data Attributes: I. Public.- Are made public in accordance with the Law of the System; II. Free.- can be obtained without giving any consideration in exchange; III. Nondiscriminatory.- The are accessible without access restriction to users; IV. Free use.- Shall cite the source as the only requirement to be used freely;

Sources:

Publication of the National Open Data law (Spanish) [16]

Terms of use for open data published on INEGI’s website(Spanish) [17]

Official release statement(Spanish): [18]

Publication of the National Geographic Information data law in the Official Gazette of the Federation: (Spanish) [19] [20]

Mozambique

The project "Consultancy Services for Upscaling Nature-Based Flood Protection in Mozambique’s Cities" of the world bank, mapped about 5000 houses in the city bounderies of Quelimane, which aren't indexed/ mapped jet. The data is available as ESRI Shapefile and would need reviewing. The license will be discussed with the world bank in the next days.

The Netherlands

See Bestaande geodata hergebruiken (Dutch).

New Zealand

See New Zealand for more potential sources.

GW-Projects (unfree)

Apparently a lot of free data is available in New Zealand. It has been used to create a comprehensive set of Garmin maps.

Legal stuff is at the bottom of this page: http://gwprojects.orcon.net.nz/gps/TM/tmmaps.html

Norway

See Norwegian import sources.

Poland

TERYT

TERYT is official government registry of administrative division of Poland. The public data contains names and identifiers for all voivodeships (provinces), powiats (counties), municipalities, places and even streets.

Licenses – public domain

Accuracy/Quality – This is the offical list of places, but it contains no geo location data. May be useful for quality assurance and updating is_in=* tags. More information (in Polish) at WikiProject Poland/Podział administracyjny

Portugal

National Sources

Any data belonging to INE - Instituto Nacional de Estatistica and BGRI - Base Geográfica de Referenciação da Informação were contacted and are stated to be freely available for OpenStreetMap as per INSPIRE directives as stated in an email.

Good morning, my apologies for the late reply to your email. I confirm that the geographic data set (CGD) for the Geographic Information Base (BGRI) is open data and that INE will have every interest in integrating them into the OSM database. This CGD is harmonized with the INSPIRE directive and published in the ATOM service http://inspire.ine.pt/SU/atom/downloadservice.xml

Regional Sources

Lisboa Municipality

Open data portal from Câmara Municipal de Lisboa (Lisbon municipality) offers a huge amount of useful georeferenced data, including 273 datasets subject to a "Creative Commons – Public Domain" license: http://dados.cm-lisboa.pt/ http://geodados.cm-lisboa.pt An Excel list of resources and supported formats is available here: http://dados.cm-lisboa.pt/dataset/catalogo-de-dados-lisboa-aberta

A page with guidelines to coordinate effords concerning imports from this source exists in this wiki.

Cascais Municipality

Cascais area SIG map Licence is confirmed with the town hall, there are no problems in using data from this site.

Rwanda (Republic of)

Ministry of the Interior and for Sports Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, has published a 1:300k raster map for whole Ruanda. The right to use the map for OSM was granted by Hanne Hall, Referatsleiterin, Entwicklungszusammenarbeit mit dem Partnerland Ruanda, MINISTERIUM DES INNERN, FÜR SPORT UND INFRASTRUKTUR, Schillerplatz 3-5, 55116 Mainz, Germany, on 20th July 2011.

20.07.2011 08:41
Betreff: AW: Ruandakarte und openstreetmap.org
Sehr geehrter Herr Keller,
vielen Dank für Ihre Anfrage. Ich habe Ihr Anliegen von der zuständigen Abteilung unseres Hauses klären lassen.
Danach spricht nichts gegen eine Verwendung unseres Kartenmaterials durch Open Street Map.
Sofern Sie dies also veranlassen möchten, steht dem nichts im Wege.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Im Auftrag
--
Hanne Hall
Referatsleiterin
Entwicklungszusammenarbeit mit dem Partnerland Ruanda
MINISTERIUM DES INNERN, FÜR SPORT UND INFRASTRUKTUR
Schillerplatz 3-5
55116 Mainz

Saudi Arabia

Administrative boundaries for Regions and Governorates

Provided by the Ministry of Health as a part of Covid response

This data can be obtained from these sources: Regions Governorates

Data is Licensed under Open Data License

Documentation and potential import here

South Africa

Chief Directorate: Surveys and Mapping of South Africa

Chief Directorate: Surveys and Mapping of South Africa has 1:50k raster maps available for the whole of South Africa, these maps are available using the South African Freedom of Information Act

The License Agreement is fairly restrictive from OSM's point of view. "No products may be copied or reproduced by any means, including digital, without prior permission."

"The Licensee shall not Commercialise the Data or any product or service derived from or incorporating the Data, unless it has first obtained the written consent of the CDSM. The CDSM may grant or refuse its consent in its absolute discretion and may grant its consent subject to any condition or conditions whatsoever."

Recently discussed here and here.

It is uncertain if the data is completely free/libré. Does the "Promotion of Access to Information Act" not grant this? Further investigation is needed.

Municipal Demarcation Board

Municipal Demarcation Board distributes shapefiles of South African provinces, districts and municipalities. Grant Slater has received permission to use the data in OpenStreetMap.

Census Boundaries

Census Data from 2011 is available as kml or shapefiles of South African provinces, districts and municipalities. The permission has to be checked for usage. Use cases are populated places as residential areas in OpenStreetMap which are not mapped. See request on github.

MadMappers (Data Dependent)

MadMappers seems to have a large amount of data covering the whole of Africa. It may be worth contacting them.

Spain

See Spain Potential Datasources for a more up-to-date information (in Spanish).

SIGPAC

One branch of the local government has a GIS-like application for controlling the rural land use, with a lot of excellent ortophotos: http://sigpac.mapa.es/fega/visor/ (Flash required) This branch has been contacted, and they have said (quite literally):

[We] have no problem in the images of the SIGPAC being used in [the OpenStreetMap] project.

IDEE

People from Madrid have already contacted the IGN ("Instituto Geográfico Nacional" or "National Geographic Institute"). They want to make data "more public", and so have agreed to let us import some of their data. Depending on the success and impact, we might be able to import lots of data and use the new aerial imagery (called "PNOA", covering the entire country at 50 cm/px).

Cadastrial data

Spanish Cadastre is publishing all cadastrial data as a WMS service [21]. They say:

La Dirección General del Catastro ofrece como servicio WMS la Cartografía Catastral de forma libre y gratuita.
"The general directorate of the cadastre offers the Cadastrial Cartography as a WMS service, free** and free*"

* as in "free beer"

** as in "freedom"

Cadastrial data can also be downloaded from the Official site as shapefiles (cartography) and *.CAT files (alphanumeric information). Terms of use are regulated by the Resolución de 23 de marzo de 2011, de la Dirección General del Catastro, por la que se aprueban los criterios de acceso, formatos de entrega y condiciones de la licencia-tipo para el acceso al servicio de descarga masiva de datos y cartografía, a través de la Sede Electrónica del Catastro. which states:

Se autoriza el uso público, incluido el comercial, de la información catastral que haya sido sometida a cualquier proceso previo de transformación...
Public use of cadastrial data is permitted, including commercial use, if such data have been previously transformed in any way...

According to the above statement, data from Spanish Cadastre can be imported into OSM once it has been transformed, for example from the original shapefiles->reproyected to EPSG:4326->converted to *.osm format.

Spanish Cadastre has a lot of information with very high accuracy, such as buildings (shape, use, height, number of floors, etc.), land use, most of streets and roads of the country, power station, trees... Many of this information is currently in OSM, mainly ways and roads, but a great part is missing, especially in low populated areas where a ground survey is less likely to be made. More information about this topic can be found in Catastro España. A long discussion has been held on Spanish mailing list, with general agreement on the usefulness of importing these data.

Orthoimaginery

The IGN publishes a lot of (free as in "free beer") imaginery at [22]

Besides that, there is a list of available orthoimaginery sources at [23]

Sweden

See Sweden/Datakällor

Switzerland

The Swiss-specific datasources are listed on their own Wiki-page.

Taiwan

See Taiwan.

Tajikistan

Tajikistan is at the same time one of the most poorly mapped countries on OSM and a very prone-to-disasters country, thus the need to find good data sources and to improve the quality of the map. A dedicated Wiki-page page has been setup.

So far, I haven't found any national dataset that is for sure 100% free of copyrights. Some potential sources are listed below, with mention of the potential problem. Please feel free to contribute to this list:

Scanned Soviet maps: although not completely up-to-date, those maps are still widely used in the country (mainly because there's nothing better available). The legal status is unclear (namely: have the copyrights fallen into the public domain with the collapse of the USSR or have they been passed to the Russian Administration? The latter seems to be the opinion of Russian mappers). See on the mailing list: [24]

Digitized 1/200000 maps: a vectorized version of the Soviet maps widely circulates in Tajikistan but the license terms are unclear (as they are not distributed with the data itself). Has anyone a crystal-clear and unambiguous proof of the licensing status of this dataset?

Any other idea?

United Kingdom

Local authority street naming notifications

I wrote an email to my local authority when I found out that they notify interested parties on the council's decisions on naming and numbering new properties and streets. For areas that have already been densely surveyed and mapped (90%+), it would be an invaluable list of places that might need re-surveying or other editing.

I got an answer back - the council do make the information freely available on their web site, but it's in the form of a PDF file per decision, in a human readable format only, and the whole list is not easily searchable. The information contains no geographic information other than relative references, eg.

That a new development of a house being built on the site adjacent to 47 Belmont Avenue, Barnet, Herts, EN4 shall be postally addressed:

WOODVIEW HOUSE, 1A NORRYS ROAD, BARNET,

HERTS, EN4 9JX.

Occasionally, whole new streets get notified.

That the access road beginning at the junction with Page Street, London, NW7 serving Copthall Leisure Centre and the surrounding properties shall be named:

CHAMPIONS WAY, LONDON, NW4/NW7.

That the access road that starts at Champions Way and ends at the Great North Way, London, NW4 serving Copthall Stadium shall be named:

GREENLANDS LANE, LONDON, NW4.

These lists are not in a standard format among local authorities, and each local authority needs to be handled differently. I plan on writing a web scraping script to attempt to identify the changes, and by searching the nearby street names, pinpoint them on the map, so I would have a list of streets that need editing / surveying. Welshie 15:59, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Land Registry Price Paid Data

Various facets of address-related data can be gleaned from the Land Registry Price Paid Data. Derek Jones provides example code of an approach that can be taken to extract approximate house number positions.

Local authority data sources

Fife

Roads database Contains information like

Alburne Park (K8)  	 Glenrothes  	 Jct Woodside Way (C125) to Jct Prestonhall Drive (K8) / K9  	 Adopted  	K8
B969 (Part 01 Of 07) 	Glenrothes 	Southfield R/bout (B921) to 50 Mph Signs North Of Southfield R/bout 	Adopted 	B969

As well as lots of other data, including for example a list of public toilets - for example a toilet in anstruther.

Also they offer a way to search for local facilities - http://www.fife.gov.uk/yourtown/index.cfm by postcode. This data could easily be extracted automatically, but the licences mentioned on the website are unsuitable (it's also unclear that this data is covered) and derivation from OS issues are also unclear.

I have not contacted them.

NaPTAN

The National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN) dataset contains details of some 350,000 public transport access points in Great Britain including bus stops, railway stations, tram stops and ferry terminals. See NaPTAN for more details.

Natural England

Natural England have datasets containing boundaries of Open Access Land (Crow Act 2000), National Parks, SSSIs, National Nature Reserves, Marine Conservation Zones, and many other protected areas. It also has data on National Trails. On April 1st 2012 Natural England started releasing data under the Open Government Licence (OGL) therefore making it available for mapping in OpenStreetMap. Read more, or view the wiki entry.

FHRS

The Food Standards Agency produces machine readable versions of the Food Hygiene Rating System data. This ranks restaurants and businesses that sell or serve food or drink with a rating from 1 to 5. See UK Food Hygiene Rating System for details.

Open Addresses UK

Open Addresses UK is a UK government funded project by the Open Data institute to create an addresses dataset which is open licensed (free of the license complications of PAF and other royal mail/O.S. mess)

Transport Scotland

High Loads Grid is a potential source of route relations - no explicit licence, so needs someone to contact.

Passenger Technology Group

Passenger Technology Group is a service provider for public transport networks, they release data under the network's brand, and licence it as Open Government License Version 3.0. OGL requires attribution, so please ensure the data provider is mentioned in Contributors.