osmxml

osmxml is an R package useful to download, read, prepare and
(rudimentarily) visualise OpenStreetMap (OSM) XML files like the
map.osm file you would get from the OSM website’s “Export”
page.

This package might not be what you’re after: please see below the
section “Other OSM-related R packages” to find more powerful tools.

Installation

You can install the development version of osmexport from
GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("stragu/osmxml")

Available functions

• ox_download(): download an OSM export by defining its bounding
  box, save it to file.
• ox_read(): read a .osm file as an object of class osm
• ox_separate_tags(): separate the tags contained in the
  other_tags column. This is done by default when importing the data
  with ox_read()

The osm class

The osm S3 class – very much subject to changing in name and
properties – has print() and plot() methods. It is made of
sf (“simple features”) spatial
objects.

Example

The functions available are designed to be pipeable. For example, to
download and read the area around Te Kura Tatauranga, Waipapa Taumata
Rau:

library(osmxml)
#> All data, downloaded or included as an example, is © OpenStreetMap contributors, and the conditions of its reuse are defined by the ODbL licence.
#> Find out more on the OSM website: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
TKT <- c(174.76598, -36.85440, 174.77019, -36.85129) |>
  ox_download() |>
  ox_read()
#> Using cached .osm file with same bbox, which was last modified on 2022-08-06 00:09:17
# see what the object contains
TKT
#> OSM data object made of 5 simple feature collections: points, lines, multilinestrings, multipolygons, other_relations
#> The corresponding sf geometry types are:
#>             points              lines   multilinestrings      multipolygons 
#>              POINT         LINESTRING    MULTILINESTRING       MULTIPOLYGON 
#>    other_relations 
#> GEOMETRYCOLLECTION

We can now use the default plot method to have a glimpse at the data:

plot(TKT)

Because the parts of the object are of class sf, they can be processed
with sf and well as dplyr functions:

library(dplyr)
library(sf)
# most common "building" values in polygons
TKT$multipolygons |>
  st_drop_geometry() |>         # remove geometry column
  filter(!is.na(building)) |>   # only keep buildings
  count(building, sort = TRUE)  # most commons values at the top
#>      building  n
#> 1  university 31
#> 2         yes  6
#> 3        roof  5
#> 4  apartments  2
#> 5      church  1
#> 6       civic  1
#> 7     garages  1
#> 8      gazebo  1
#> 9      retail  1
#> 10      ruins  1

Contributions and feedback

Contributions are welcome and appreciated. You can contribute to this
package by:

• Testing it and reporting
  issues you encounter
• Suggesting a change with a pull request (but please discuss your
  idea in an issue beforehand)
• Writing a new vignette with an interesting worked example

Note that all contributions to the codebase will be released under the
GPL, and submitting your contribution to this repository
is an implicit agreement.

We expect contributors to respect UQRUG’s Code of
Conduct.

If a conversation or comment does not belong in a public issue report,
please contact the maintainer listed in the package
description.

Data licence

OSM data included in this package (in the ./inst directory) and
downloaded with the ox_download() function is © OpenStreetMap
contributors, and the conditions of its reuse are defined by the ODbL
licence. You likely need to
include this information on anything derived from it. Find out more on
the OSM website.

Other OSM-related R packages

There are many other OSM-related R packages that might be more suitable
for what you are hoping to achieve. Notable packages available on CRAN
are:

• osmadata uses the
  Overpass API to download datasets based on location and tags. Use
  this for a more targeted download.
• osmextract
  uses different providers to download chunks of large data dumps, for
  specific regions and dates. Some providers offer data already
  prepared for particular uses (e.g. data relevant to cycling).
• osmplotr
  downloads OSM data with the Overpass API and provides many tools to
  render the data.
• osmar
  accesses OSM data from different sources and converts it to various
  formats. Note that it hasn’t been updated since 2013.

Transport-specific packages:

• stplanr provides
  tools for sustainable transport planning, making use of the osrm
  package.
• osrm bridges R with
  the OSRM API (routing service based on OpenStreetMap data).
• opentripplanner
  provides an interface to OpenTripPlanner (OTP), a routing service
  that relies on OpenStreetMap data.

To acquire basemaps:

• OpenStreetMap
  allows downloading rendered OSM data from various servers.
• OSMscale plots
  spatial data with OSM basemaps and corresponding scale bars.

Other interactive visualisation packages automatically fetch rendered
OSM data as basemaps, like leaflet
and tmap.