WikiProject Tanzania
 Tanzania, Africa
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| Latitude : -6.63, Longitude : 35.84 |
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Tanzania is a country in Africa at latitude -6.63, longitude 35.84.
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| OpenStreetMap images (and underlying map data) are freely available under the OpenStreetMap License. |
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Description
This country on the East Coast of Africa includes the archipelago of Zanzibar.
Cities, Towns & Villages
If we stick to the recommended practice that a city is a place with over 100,000 inhabitants, we can use the 2002 census data (http://www.tanzania.go.tz/census/regions.htm) to identify how we should classify cities, towns and villages:
>100k:
Dar es Salaam (2.4M) Zanzibar (391k) Mwanza (385k) Arusha (270k) Mbeya (230k) Morogoro (207k) Tanga (179k) Dodoma (149k) Moshi (144k) Kigoma (130k) Tabora (128k) Musoma (103k) Iringa (100k) Songea (100k)
Cities are all present, and I think I have included everything that should be classified as a 'Town' (10k-100k). For those places I might have missed, I suggest calling it a town if the census shows it to be 'Urban' and > 10k, or if it is 'Mixed' and > 20k. Anything below that should be a village.
Highways
Road types
In order to distingish between trunk, primary and secondary roads, it is suggested to used the classification provided by Tanroads: (http://www.tanroads.go.tz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110&Itemid=115) At least trunk roads are quite clearly outlined, primary and secondary may be derived from the maps provided on their website.
Road identifiers
It is suggested to use the road identifiers (ref=*) used by road signalisation. For the trunk roads Tanroads has published the identifiers (http://www.tanroads.go.tz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110&Itemid=115), they are compliant with road signalisation.
Railways
From the website of Tanzania Railways: (http://www.trctz.com/networkmain.htm) We can try to pencil in all the stations insofar as we have coordinates for them or we can find them on the yahoo imagery.
The wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAZARA_Railway has the same for the Tazara railway to Zambia, though I suspect there are more stations than listed there.
Data Import
- Africover ([1]) - has granted us (Development Seed ([2]) - permission to upload their base layers - roads, rails, admin boundaries.
Accomplished Africover imports:
- Road shapefile.
- Towns shapefile: Layers "major towns" (-->place=village) and "other towns" (-->place=village) have been imported
Outstanding work includes:
- Rivers - Africover
- Admin Boundaries (need to determine current status of OSM dataset before doing anything here) - Africover
External Datasets
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Africover) ([3])- A project aimed at generating a database of GIS layers for the purpose of promoting sustainable management of environmental resources at national, regional and global levels. Tanzania data includes administrative and political boundaries, rivers, towns, and spatially/thematically aggregated landcover. We've received permission from Africover to import road, river, and administrative boundary data layers into OSM. We expect this will happen late April 2009.
- International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) ([4])- A diverse collection of spatial data layers, many of which relate directly to livestock and agriculture. Layers available for Tanzania include soils, forests, roads (but poor resolution), administrative boundaries. The administrative boundaries provide data for regions, districts, and wards, and include population density. Licensing is restricted to non-commercial use only.
- Map Library ([5]) - A project of the Map Maker Trust. It has a simple base map, outline, and layers of administrative boundaries and areas, level one divisions, and satellite images.
- Tanzania GIS User Group ([6] - A network of GIS practitioners and users who are based in Tanzania or work on issues related to the country. It is a place where knowledge and information can be shared. Available Layers include administrative boundaries, lakes and waterways, and parks.
- GEOnet Names Server. I have produced a couple of gpx files for the PPL and PK entries for Tanzania. They can be loaded as a layer in JOSM and be used to give an idea as to where a place is. Download tzPK-05-09-2009.gpx and tzPPL-05-09-2009.gpx
Other datasets that might be useful:
- CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information ([7] -Elevation layers for the world.
- Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) ([8]) - Population layers for the world.
- SACIDS ([9]) Southern African Center for Infectious Disease Surveillance - epidemiological and public health data
