[HN Gopher] Overpass Turbo: A Web Based Data Mining Tool for Ope...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Overpass Turbo: A Web Based Data Mining Tool for OpenStreetMap
        
       Author : stefankuehnel
       Score  : 190 points
       Date   : 2024-01-24 03:13 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (overpass-turbo.eu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (overpass-turbo.eu)
        
       | dabber wrote:
       | For anyone else curious:
       | 
       | Source code for the backend here:
       | https://github.com/drolbr/Overpass-API
       | 
       | Found from this link listed in the help modal: https://overpass-
       | api.de/ (also links to two additional frontends.)
        
       | shpx wrote:
       | I've been asking ChatGPT to write Overpass Turbo queries and it
       | does a good job.
        
         | maelito wrote:
         | Yes. It was way harder with the other LLMs. Except Claude
         | maybe.
        
         | zarazas wrote:
         | There is also this: https://overpassnl.schumann.pub/
        
         | Raphaellll wrote:
         | we systematically tested this:
         | https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.16060.pdf
        
           | maelito wrote:
           | Where can we use it ? I couldn't find a link. It is closed-
           | source ?
           | 
           | OK, I had a hard time understanding that the link given above
           | is the demo of this paper.
           | 
           | https://overpassnl.schumann.pub.
           | 
           | Very interesting. Quite surprising too : it can find non
           | trivial searches like "bars with darts" ("bars a flechette"
           | in French), but not easy ones ("fromagerie" or "dermato").
           | 
           | More complex queries did not work : "cafes close to the
           | river" returned nothing, neither did "touristic site close to
           | a pedestrian area" or "touristic streets".
        
             | Raphaellll wrote:
             | Yes, it's far from perfect. We currently work on augmenting
             | the prompt with e.g. relevant key-value pairs extracted
             | from https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features
        
         | e-v wrote:
         | Lucky you! I tried learning with examples generated by ChatGPT
         | and none of them worked at all. I then learned the basics of
         | the API by reading this excellent tutorial: https://osm-
         | queries.ldodds.com/tutorial/, and realised that, in hindsight,
         | ChatGPT's answers weren't even close to being correct.
        
         | stevage wrote:
         | Yeah, I've had that experience too. Or at least it gets close
         | enough that I can make it work.
         | 
         | The Overpass QL language is the most...bizarrely constructed
         | language I've ever had to use. It's a bit hard to believe that
         | the person who designed the language thought this was a
         | perfectly reasonable statement:                  (._; >;);
        
           | Alifatisk wrote:
           | Gotta agree with you, the QL is strange. I tried using the
           | wizard but it kept spinning. I tried asking Bard and ChatGPT
           | but they provided invalid syntax.
           | 
           | This is sad because overpass is extremely powerful tool.
           | 
           | I'll give the tutorials other commenters linked a try.
        
           | Aachen wrote:
           | I read up on the syntax a few years ago and, by learning only
           | a few of the symbols, it actually starts to make a lot of
           | sense and seemed like a nice shorthand.
           | 
           | I then promptly forgot everything and find the syntax very
           | annoying again nowadays... seriously, it's weird remembering
           | having knowledge but not having the knowledge itself anymore
        
             | flexagoon wrote:
             | Overpass syntax is one of those things that I just read the
             | documentation for every single time I have to do it. Last
             | time I used it things like ChatGPT didn't exist yet though,
             | so I'll probably use it from now on if I ever have to write
             | an overpass query
        
               | stevage wrote:
               | Yeah me too. No way is my brain going to remember any of
               | that between times that I use it.
        
           | vloewe wrote:
           | I scraped the these websites
           | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features and gave it
           | to OpenAI's Assistant maker -> This made great results in
           | making valid queries
           | 
           | Could even make prompts like "Can you find the buildings
           | closer than 500m to a cafe?"
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | I really don't understand the point of shortcuts where this
           | is the result.
           | 
           | I'm a really big fan of clear and legible code. I'm not at
           | In-n-Out with a secret menu. I'm trying to make
           | changes/updates to code someone else wrote. I don't care how
           | clever they felt they were by using esoteric shortcuts that
           | might make things short and fit on one line. I want to be
           | able to read the code and follow what it does in the least
           | amount of time. Now, if the compiler makes different/better
           | decisions when reading something like that vs much more
           | legible code, we can maybe have a discussion.
        
         | webel0 wrote:
         | It does. The problem is that I have a hard time determining if
         | the output is, indeed, what I was trying to query in the first
         | place!
        
       | ImaCake wrote:
       | There is a QGIS plugin for this API as well which is excellent.
       | 
       | Note that in openstreetmap.com you can zoom in and query items
       | (cursor with question mark icon) to get the feature information
       | that you then use in Overpass. Very useful!
        
         | Freak_NL wrote:
         | openstreetmap.org not .com (!)
        
           | flexagoon wrote:
           | openstreetmap.com just redirects to the .org domain. There's
           | also just osm.org, which is much easier to type.
        
       | curtisblaine wrote:
       | The wizard isn't working for me. Just keeps spinning.
        
         | a_gnostic wrote:
         | Spinning is a nice trick.
        
       | marklit wrote:
       | I built osm_split to extract OSM features into named GPKG files.
       | It makes it easy to pick features by name and drop them into
       | QGIS. https://github.com/marklit/osm_split
        
         | RicoElectrico wrote:
         | Isn't the point of GPKG that you can bundle multiple named
         | layers in one file?
        
           | marklit wrote:
           | Yeah, you can. The file will be huge though and QGIS won't be
           | performant. Somewhere like Tokyo will be ~400 MB in OSM's PBF
           | format but will contain ~1,300 different types of features.
           | 
           | Seeing these listed in alphabetical order in a file explorer
           | makes it easier to track down only what you need to build
           | your map.
           | 
           | It could be you only end up using 150 MB of GPKG files and
           | QGIS, even on an old laptop, would be performant.
        
       | vloewe wrote:
       | Overpass is great!
       | 
       | Published a ShowHN about Atlas.co yesterday, but I also just want
       | to mention that we have a Overpass Turbo OSM integration that
       | enables you to query data directly in a map and then download it
       | as geojson, kml or shp (obv you can also style it and use it in
       | analysis). Might be useful for some
        
       | lmeyerov wrote:
       | Related: If any OSM GIS engineering enthusiasts, we have a small
       | OSS repo we are looking for an assist on that should be fun for
       | the right person: Spin up a big box, quickly render planet-scale
       | tiles at a decent level (maptiler), and restart as a more
       | reasonably-sized zoom level for serving. We did the core
       | infra/devops, and are looking for someone to help tweak the perf
       | knobs etc. See my profile on how to reach.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | please disclose if you are asking for an unpaid intern or
         | volunteer with certain qualifications
        
           | lmeyerov wrote:
           | Sponsor, even!
        
         | Doctor_Fegg wrote:
         | Do you really mean maptiler? tilemaker or planetiler will do a
         | better job of "quickly rendering planet-scale tiles".
        
       | the_g0d_f4ther wrote:
       | Actually saved me in an internship where i needed a complete
       | dataset of adresses. This post remindes me that i had a gdoc
       | where i had i lot of ideas for side projects, thanks !
        
       | Tempest1981 wrote:
       | Mentioned here a few months ago: (was trying to remember where I
       | saw it)
       | 
       |  _How to find a street in 2 minutes [video] (youtube.com)_
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36912880
        
       | guwop wrote:
       | Hmmmm. If i want to do larger scale extractions of OSM data into
       | a layer - what's the move? I remember someone on here posted a
       | way to do it
        
         | twp wrote:
         | I wrote https://github.com/twpayne/osm-extract for exactly
         | this.
        
         | ikawe wrote:
         | I typically download a pbf extract, and then use the osmium cli
         | for local filtering.
         | 
         | Then I use ogr2ogr to convert to whatever output format I need.
        
       | HumblyTossed wrote:
       | Slightly off topic and maybe better as an Ask HN, but here goes.
       | 
       | There are apps for updating OSM that will let me put in the
       | information for the houses in my neighborhood, for example, but
       | that gets tedious. Are there any scripts (python, shell, ?) that
       | would make that easier?
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import
         | 
         | > 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!
        
         | Quot wrote:
         | I used StreetComplete when I had an Android phone. It looks for
         | missing data near you, and gives you a really nice interface to
         | input that data.
         | 
         | They are working on an iOS build, and I can't wait to start
         | using it again.
         | 
         | https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/
         | 
         | Edit: Also, OSM has a few wiki pages for editing software on
         | different platforms.
         | 
         | - Android_apps_that_can_upload_changes_to_OSM -
         | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Android_apps_th...
         | 
         | - Android_apps_that_can_record_GPS_tracks -
         | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Android_apps_th...
         | 
         | - IOS_software -
         | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:IOS_software
         | 
         | - Mobile_editors -
         | https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Mobile_editors
        
       | jjwiseman wrote:
       | I've played around with Overpass and GPT a bit. Here are a few
       | examples that I think demonstrate the potential:
       | 
       | Find all buildings that straddle the boundary between Glendale
       | and Burbank in California:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1636849040548675584
       | 
       | Finding the suspected origin of an explosion, by using the time
       | from seeing the explosion on video to the time the sound of the
       | explosion reaches the microphone:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1636859983223734273
       | 
       | Someone on twitter asked "Is anyone aware of any 4 way stop
       | intersections in Australia?"
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1516239321094713346
       | 
       | Finding examples of airport runways that cross highways:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1709598048459132976
       | 
       | Finding banks that might be at risk of robbery:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/lemonodor/status/1716153200750051332
        
         | jjwiseman wrote:
         | Bellingcat's Bellingcat OpenStreetMap search is a tool that
         | wraps Overpass Turbo in an easier-to-use interface for the
         | specific task of geolocation based on image and videos:
         | https://osm-search.bellingcat.com
        
           | jjwiseman wrote:
           | Here's a video showing the sort of geolocation task the
           | Bellingcat tool is intended for:
           | https://youtu.be/GqKNKQ02pjY?si=DyAB3YZzl3gJUzT9
        
         | WaxProlix wrote:
         | This is awesome, but a lot of the queries I've tried to make
         | seem to fail on OSM's data itself, which is sad. For instance,
         | "coffee shops within a certain distance of fast EV chargers"
         | would be really valuable, but the underlying data just doesn't
         | have that EV data. So it's cool for a lot of stuff, but mostly
         | explicitly streets; the other kinds of nodes all exist but
         | aren't as well fleshed out as they could be (totally
         | understandable).
        
           | Doctor_Fegg wrote:
           | That's because we're all cyclists ;)
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-01-24 23:01 UTC)