WhosOnFirst - integrate own data

[dawidl11]

Hi all,

we use WhosOnFirst data a lot lately and use it e.g., for our geocoding Pelias instances:

• whosonfirst-data-postalcode
• whosonfirst-data-admin-latest

For our application purposes, I would like to integrate my own data into the WhosOnFirst data. The aim would be to create or enrich the WhosOnFirst files "whosonfirst-data-admin" and "whosonfirst-data-postalcode" ourselves in the future (for own, internal purposes). We would like to integrate our own postcode areas, administrative areas, and districts of large cities here.
For this purpose, we would like to develop our own procedure with which we can develop or enrich the above-mentioned data ourselves. It would be important for us that this is not just a one-time process, but that we can do this again and again.

We first see the following steps that are necessary before the process:

• Convert all features into GeoJSON and assign individual URIs.
• Store each feature in a separate file following the WOF structure
• Map the features to the WOF placetypes
• Add the required WOF properties
• Validate the geometries with WOF data validator

Steps for the process:

• Download every whosonfirst-data repository (thousands of files)
• Integrate a newly created whosonfirst-data-admin-de and whosonfirst-data-postalcode-de
• Run dist build for SQLite

Are our steps listed correctly one after the other? Is there anything missing here?
Where could we get more information or documentation for these steps?

Any information or advice would be very valuable to us and if possible, I would also like to arrange a meeting where we could discuss the issues directly.

Many thanks in advance for the answers!
Dawid

[thisisaaronland]

Hi @dawidl11

The use case you are describing is not well-documented but has always been an explicit goal of WOF: to allow independent, application-specific WOF-style datasets to sit alongside the "core" WOF data.

Most of this work (that I am aware of) has been happening in the context of the SFO Museum:

• https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/tags/whosonfirst/

Of particular interest might be this post which discusses how SFO Museum manages to maintain, and supplement, a subset of the core WOF dataset:

• https://millsfield.sfomuseum.org/blog/2022/08/01/airports/

Also, of potential interest is this thread about UK boundaries and how to integrate project-specific placetypes in the hierarchy:

• Update UK Admin Boundary Polygons whosonfirst-data/whosonfirst-data#1871

Note that this is an active conversation so everything is still in flux.

Finally, this package might be of use for fetching and iterating through large amounts of WOF data:

• https://github.com/whosonfirst/go-whosonfirst-iterate-organization

[dawidl11]

Thank you very much for the links!
We will analyze them the days and if necessary still ask questions.