Data formats

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

Shapefile

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

`LAYER.shp`	Feature geometries
`LAYER.shx`	Feature geometry index
`LAYER.dbf`	Feature attributes
`LAYER.prj`	Projection used
`LAYER.cpg`	Code page for character encoding
`README.txt`	Information 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.