Since I want to covert an OSM file to a shapefile, I need to know if all nodes in OSM are POIs. Should I delete the nodes which are not POI? And different people will upload different nodes using GPS even though they are on the same road, so how do we define this road? I'm a newcomer and don't have much knowledge about OSM.I hope somebody can help me :-) asked 16 Oct '12, 09:14  HC_bunny edited 16 Oct '12, 10:17  sleske |
One Answer:
Of roughly 1.6 billion nodes in OSM (as of October 2012), only 70 million - less than 5% - have at least one tag, which is a prerequisite for being a POI. Even a node with a tag need not be a POI; sometimes, even the nodes used to support an imported geometry are tagged with a "source" or similar tag. If you want to convert OSM data to shape files, use one of the existing utilities osm2shp or osmjs, or import into PostGIS with osm2pgsql or imposm and export to shape from there. Enter "shapefile" in the search box above to see other questions and answers about this. answered 16 Oct '12, 09:24  Frederik Ramm ♦ |
Also, not all POIs are nodes - some are drawn as areas.
Also, take some days and read the OSM wiki ... starting for example at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Elements or the Main Page