Looking for free shapefiles for communications and water infrastructure

Question

I'm looking for communications layers in shapefile format, covering all Middle East, is anything available for free?

I'm also looking for water bodies, rivers, anything related to water in the same area, any suggestions?

Answer 1

I would suggest taking a look at market.weogeo.com. It is very easy to define the geographic area you want to download the data (there are multiple sources available, most are free). OSM Planet is something I would take a look first. Create an account (for free) and choose the layers you want to have in your dataset as well as the data format. I have attached the picture so you might take a look.

You can also find Natural Earth data here, at the same place.

Also, please consider checking a question on GIS data sources, there are some here, too.

Answer 2

Communication data is usually hard to get since it is typically under the category of sensitive and proprietary.

You may obtain free hydro data from Natural Earth