Overview of OSM2HDX and Access Information

What and Why:

A tool that places extracts of OpenStreetMap data onto HDX at set intervals.

Currently, there are several ways to export and use data from the OSM database but all of these have drawbacks including

1) they require an understanding of the OSM tagging in order to find data

2) they don’t readily connect to desktop GIS applications

3) they are limited in terms of exposed data or attributes

The OSM2HDX tool is an extension to the HOT Export Tool, and was built by HOT for HDX in early 2017.  

Architecture

Note that the resources for each dataset live on the HOT servers.

Access

Production: https://export.hotosm.org/en/v3/hdx

Staging (use for testing, datasets pushed to HDX Demo Server): http://exports-staging.hotosm.org

Click on the "HDX"item in the top menu

To be able to see that menu item, you will need to

1. get an OSM account
2. log in to the export tool (at the production and/or staging links above)
3. request to have your OSM account added to the "HDX" group.  This will give you access to the HDX portion of the export tool (the "Admin UI"). Contact Amadu Ndong, CJ Hendrix, Godfrey Takavarasha, Dan Mihaila, or a member of the HOT team.  
   1. Note that if a user is also to have permissions to manage users, they will need to be added to the Admins group and marked as "staff" 

The administration interface of the tool (for managing user permissions) is here: https://export.hotosm.org/en/admin and is accessible by users flagged as "staff" in the user list.  Note that you need to log in to the main Admin UI first, then go to the administration link. 

Conventions

See Guideline for creating an OSM extract for HDX (using the automated osm2hdx tool) for naming conventions and other best practices. 

Limitations

The export tool is limited to 3 million km^2.  This is large enough to include all countries except

Source

Even some smaller countries may not work without being split because they are feature dense (Indonesia, Ukraine for example).