Downloading historical OpenStreetMap data

Question

Where can I download historical data from OpenStreetMap?

I’m I am interested in downloading an OSM .pbf file of a particular city in previous years (say, from 2008 and 2010).

Answer 1

Historical OSM data is available in the OpenStreetMap Full History Dump file. You can dowload it as *.pbf or *.xml data. Extracs of selected countries can be downloaded from http://osm.personalwerk.de/full-history-extracts/ or from http://odbl.poole.ch/extracts/. I recommend you the OSM-history-splitter to generate extracts out of *.osh files and the OSM-history-renderer to render data from specific historical timestamps.

Another option is geofabrik website, which makes available OSM data in three different formats: .pbf , .shp and .XML for all countries and continents. The oldest datasets they have are from 2014-01-01. Search for "raw directory index" there to find the yearly datasets, e.g.: https://download.geofabrik.de/europe/

Answer 2

http://planet.openstreetmap.org/ provides access to OSM data in different formats and for many different points in time.

In particular, PBFs are available at http://planet.openstreetmap.org/pbf/

Answer 3

Use overpass turbo (https://overpass-turbo.eu/). Create a bounding box over your desired area, then use the following code and/or use the examples and resources on the webpage to tailor the code to isolate the data that you want (the below code loads all drinking water objects as they existed on 2016-01-01). Export the data to kml and upload to qgis!

[date:"2016-01-01T00:00:00Z"];
(
  node
  [amenity=drinking_water]
  ({{bbox}});
  way
  [amenity=drinking_water]
  ({{bbox}});
  relation
  [amenity=drinking_water]
  ({{bbox}});
);
out body;
>;
out skel qt;