Generate AOI polygons for selected countries

[sfkeller]

Generate AOI polygons for selected countries. Create a subdirectory as a repository (including the generator script), like ../country-extracts.

Use up-to-date PBF extracts e.g. from Geofabrik (else if generating from local planet, use simplified "core" country borders, so e.g. Denmark would be the mainland without Greenland etc.).

This is the initial list of (european) countries:

• Switzerland (see https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.892644 for a first publication)
• Belgium
• UK
• Singapore

then (later on):

• Liechtenstein
• Austria
• France
• Italy
• Germany

Finally, create a README.md there which explains how it's all about and how additional countries can be added.

Background: Currently it's possible to run /webapp/create_aois.py in order to create an AOI with the attached DB (e.g. Europe). It would be great to limit the generation for a specific country (e.g. given the country outline polygon e.g. as GeoJSON. Raphael know where to get such polygons).

[chapmanjacobd]

You can use GADM to get polygons for the whole world

https://gadm.org/download_world.html

I think they are in planets.osm as well

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tagging_Country_Borders

[das-g]

You can use GADM to get polygons for the whole world

https://gadm.org/download_world.html

Those are administrative areas. Those are already explicitly included in OpenStreetMap and there usually are official local sources to update them.

In this project, we're interested in areas of interest (AOI), similar to the yellow-ish and orange-ish areas on Google Maps. Those aren't directly linked to administrative areas.

Also, the license of GADM

The data are freely available for academic use and other non-commercial use. Redistribution, or commercial use, is not allowed without prior permission. Using the data to create maps for academic publishing is allowed.

is incompatible with OpenStreetMap and we'd like to provide AOIs in a way that they can easily be used together with OpenStreetMap data or even included in it if appropriate.

I think they are in planets.osm as well

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tagging_Country_Borders

Yeah. If you're looking for OpenStreetMap-based administrative areas, see https://wambachers-osm.website/index.php/projekte/internationale-administrative-grenzen

[das-g]

Oops, sorry. I was confusing this issue with another one. (Which was about manually drawing AOIs, so we can compare the results of our algorithm to something.)

I'm just responding to the last paragraph of this issue...

Background: Currently it's possible to run /webapp/create_aois.py in order to create an AOI with the attached DB (e.g. Europe). It would be great to limit the generation for a specific country (e.g. given the country outline polygon e.g. as GeoJSON. Raphael know where to get such polygons).

Yeah that does indeed require administrative boundaries. We'll use the ones from OSM, probably through the wambacher dataset.

I thought I was being helpful but I guess not

While we probably won't use GADM for this project, your comment is still appreciated. I didn't know about GADM yet and it's always useful to have alternative data sources available.

[chapmanjacobd]

Thanks for sharing the wambacher dataset. I wasn't familiar with that one.

I'm working on creating a global AOI table for the purposes of categorizing walkability. I was pleased to find the whitepaper of this project because it basically outlines everything I was planning on doing so it saves me a lot of guesswork :)