I am wanting to return the Continent for a reverse geocode, I have used the documentation links as an example but I seem to be getting everything but the continent returned. Am I doing something wrong? missing parameter? Any help greatly appreciated. Regards, asked 04 May '16, 12:11  john5092563 |
One Answer:
Nominatim imports the 7 continents, but only as center point. So you can search for "Europe" only and get a result back. That means for example Europe https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/25871341 is treated as a child of Germany, not its parent. What is the usecase you need continents for? I wanted to add those to https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/ because we use multiple geocoders and some return a continent while others (like Nominatim) don't and that's inconsistent. I would probably use a fixed country=>continent mapping though which might be incorrect for cities which are on two continents (Istanbul). answered 04 May '16, 13:29  mtmail |
I guess the actual reason is that OSM has all its continents just defined as nodes, not as ways / boundary relations. I wonder what the reason for this is.
I think the general avoidance of super-national borders, be it continents or trade areas (European Union, NAFTA). In Taginfo all admin_level 0 or 1 I see are errors. admin_level=2 are countries.