Getting started: DATA

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nvkelso edited this page Mar 2, 2012 · 40 revisions

Before you begin:

Setup your PostGIS database

Open Street Map

Extractotron

Get OSM data extracts for big cities world wide in small chunks (mb instead of gb). Updated monthly.

http://metro.teczno.com/

OSM Planet

The big kahuna. You'll need a beefy machine. Updated daily.

For making detailed city maps from zooms 12 to 19+.

##Natural Earth

For making generalized world maps from zooms 0 to 8.

NaturalEarthData.com

Help getting Natural Earth into PostGIS

Aaron's Naturalearth-tools - Shell script for fetching the data, clean-geometry, and reprojecting to web Mercator from Aaron

##Other data

Often you can get GIS map data from your local or state government.

##Considerations

Does your basemap need to reflect the latest edits?
Do you cover a rapidly expanding urban area where the roads change all the time and you're users will notice?
Will you re-render your basemap on a never, yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, frequency?
World up to a certain zoom then just your local geography?