Now holiday season is nearing it’s time for preparing your hiking/biking trip. One essential thing is to stay hydrated so we need to know all the waterpoints in the destination area.
One good option is to extract waterpoints from OpenStreetMap and get the data on the mobile.
The process is very simple:
– go to https://overpass-turbo.eu/
– Navigate to your favorite area.
– On the left side there is already a query for waterpoints in the area of interest:
node
[amenity=drinking_water]
({{bbox}});
out;
– Press ‘run’ button on the upperleft and all the water points will be shown as blue dots.
– Press Export and formats like GeoJSON/GPX/KML will show up.
– Personally I like to use MAPS.ME app (https://maps.me/download) on the phone because it offers offline OpenStreetMap maps. MAPS.ME can import KML files, so let’s choose this format for export. E-mail yourself the KML file, open the KML on the Phone and the waterpoints will appear in MAPS.ME.
Sometimes you have to search around a bit to discover a waterpoint so have fun with that. And the good thing with OpenStreetMap is that if you’re missing points or they are located wrongly, you can edit the database yourself! See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide.