Data Formats

Data available on this site currently always uses the popular Shapefile format. Other formats might be added in the future.

Shapefile

This is a popular format for GIS data. Each layer is in its own set of files named after the layer. For easy download all the files are packed into a zip archive. The archive contains the following files:

LAYER.shpFeature geometries
LAYER.shxFeature geometry index
LAYER.dbfFeature attributes
LAYER.prjProjection used
LAYER.cpgCode page for character encoding
READMEInformation about this layer

All string attributes use the Unicode UTF-8 character encoding, the same as the OpenStreetMap data.

See the Wikipedia for more details about this format.