find out the "ground" based on given coordinates (e.g. car road, train track, bicycle path, forest, ...)

[Jana_Tuerlich]

Hello everybody,

I would like to find out the “ground” based on given coordinates. In other words, I want to know if at the given coordinates are, for example:
-a car road
-a bicycle path
-train tracks
-a forest / forest road
-a building

• other

Does anyone know of an api I could use for this? Or do any of you have another idea how I could realize this?

Many thanks already in advance and many greetings!

[knimediger]

@Jana_Tuerlich

You might make use of OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap and use the data to identify the location.
There are several possibilities to access the geo data. It starts from downloading the full database and run it locally and includes also interfaces to retrieve selected data (e.g. Overpass https://overpass-turbo.eu/ )
So this will depend on your actual use case.
Maybe you can give more insight to your requirements?

[Jana_Tuerlich]

Hello Knimediger,

Thanks for the answer. Using OpenStreetMap to determine the location sounds good.

Maybe you can give more insight to your requirements?:

I have about 200 rows (number increasing) with coordinates, from which the location and thus the underground should be determined. The different categories, like forest road, highway, train track etc. can be set to e.g. 10 stk.
Do you understand what I mean?

How could I realize this?

[knimediger]

@Jana_Tuerlich

Your requirement has some small challenges.
To understand them you should know some details of OpenStreetMap (OSM) and the data in OSM.
OSM stores mainly nodes and ways.
A node ist just one pair (lat, lon).
A way is a (ordered) sequence of pairs of nodes.

So what are the challenges?

1. When you have a (lat/lon) to check, it ist highly probale that no node will be found for that position. On any type of ways you need to check whether your position is between two of the nodes
2. The distance between two nodes on a way may be very high. So you will have to load a bigger part of data around your position.
3. A similiar problem to 1. arises for buildings which are build by a closed path. Your position can be anywhere in that polygon.
4. Keep in mind the accuracy of both your positions and the data in OSM. Both may be slightly incorrect. A potential approach would be to check also some area around your position whether there are some of the objects you are looking for.

As these are questions concerning OSM and not KNIME you may get more support for this in the OSM forum OpenStreetMap Forum