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up vote 9 down vote favorite

Is there some database with official information about medical centers, schools, POI's and their geo coordinates for all countries in the world? It doesn't have to be free, but I need the GEO coordinates as well, because I need to connect them to my products!

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4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote

I think your best chance is OpenStreetMap, e.g.

Tag:amenity=school

For a list of options for the amenity tag, check http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:En:Key:amenity

I don't know what commercial POI databases are out there, but I doubt that one would cover all countries and topics you're looking for world-wide.

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Hi underdark, thanks! Where can I download the data and how to see the names of all tags to extract from the map? – Niko Nik Aug 13 '11 at 19:53
up vote 5 down vote

"Points of interest" is a very subjective thing, it depends on the domain of your interest. Also, I doubt you'll find anything "official".

The closest thing would be OpenStreetMap, but you should be aware of certain things:

  1. The global coverage is not even: some countries are super-covered (Germany, UK) while others are less so.
  2. Getting to OSM data could prove to be a challenge: the global database file is quite large (15-20 GB zipped) and you only really need a small part of it concerning POIs. There are various ways to extract the data, but none of them are easy or fast. You could pay someone to do it for you, of course.
  3. Tagging of POIs in OSM is pretty liberal, so you'll have to do some data mining before getting the results you want.
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Hi Igor, I don't need super covare at first time! I need a basis information, and afterthat I will extend my info. Where is the link to download the data? – Niko Nik Aug 13 '11 at 19:54
1  
Here's the database snapshot called Planet.OSM: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm. If you plan to use OSM data commercially, you should read wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#Using. I also recommend getting acquainted with OSM by reading basic OSM Wiki pages (especially wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features) – Igor Brejc Aug 13 '11 at 20:00
Thanks! I have read the license, and I hope I can use it for my product. I will not sell it or something! I will display only some stuff like POI's or points nearby the properties I display on my site. I hope the license allows this? – Niko Nik Aug 13 '11 at 20:35
You can use OSM data commercially, but you need to show the attribution of the data. If you disseminate the data, it needs to be licensed under the same license OSM uses. – Igor Brejc Aug 13 '11 at 20:42
up vote 5 down vote

August 1, 2011 blog posting:

"SimpleGeo’s CC0 Places data set is now available for download at no cost. If you’d like to get your hands on 21M+ POIs that cover 63 countries, we’re ready to hand that over to you in one file. The file is about 2GB in .ZIP format, and remember, with the CC0 license, this data becomes yours – free and clear – to do whatever you want. We hope you do awesome things with it!"

http://blog.simplegeo.com/2011/08/01/august-updates/

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up vote 1 down vote

The very easy way to get this is with the Mapquest XAPI API: http://developer.mapquest.com/web/products/open/xapi You supply a query, a bounding box, and get back very simple XML. Tags look like:

amenity=school amenity=hospital

Learn more on the OpenStreetMap Wiki. Or seek out CloudMade where you can click and drag to make a custom map, then click to select which points of interest (e.g. schools, hospitals) you'd like shown also.

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Interesting, the dev guide has this search feature that let's you test it out and get back XML. – Chad Cooper Jan 30 '12 at 17:12

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