NWB

Nationaal Wegenbestand (NWB)

The Nationaal Wegenbestand — National Road Database — is a digital geographic dataset of all roads in the Netherlands. It includes roads managed by the national government, provinces, municipalities and water authorities.

It covers roads that have a street name or number, including free-standing footpaths and cycle paths and unpaved roads. A separate cycle-path file (NWB Fietspaden) is published alongside the road file.

Use

The NWB is well suited to network analysis of the Dutch road network, with two limitations:

• It covers the Netherlands only. Note that even many fastest routes within the Netherlands run through Belgium or Germany, which a national-only file cannot represent. Either add a border zone from another source, or accept a systematic bias against locations near the border.
• Cycling and walking are only partially covered by the main road file. Modelling those modes properly requires the separate cycle-path file, and even then the footpath network is less complete than in OSM.

In exchange, the NWB offers a consistent national data model, authoritative road-management attributes and stable identifiers — which makes it attractive where results have to be tied to official Dutch road administration.

Alternatives

• OSM — global coverage, and better for cycling and walking
• Network data sources — full comparison