Australian Populated Places from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports of settlements and residential areas across Australia, provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). The data includes named cities, towns, villages, suburbs, and residential land areas, last updated in May 2026. Completeness of mapping varies by region, with urban areas typically being well-mapped.

Use Cases

• Create demographic context maps based on named settlements.
• Perform settlement-level targeting for planning or humanitarian response based on residential land areas.
• Analyze population distribution patterns using the categorized place and landuse data.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative world map.
• Covers multiple populated place types including cities, towns, villages, and suburbs.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats including GEOPACKAGE, SHP, and GEOJSON.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Data completeness varies by region, with remote areas potentially being incomplete.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-contributed mapping via the OpenStreetMap platform.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-15 04:17:34.381094

Geography

Australia