Costa Rica Waterways from OpenStreetMap for Environmental Analysis

Water features across Costa Rica exported from OpenStreetMap. The dataset includes rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds, and other water bodies tagged with relevant OSM keys. It was last updated on 2026-05-14 and is provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Use Cases

• Flood-risk modelling based on the mapped network of rivers and streams.
• Watershed analysis using the spatial distribution of water bodies.
• Creating environmental basemaps for contextual GIS analysis using the water features.

Strengths

• Data is available in multiple geospatial formats including GEOPACKAGE, KML, SHP, and GEOJSON.
• Derived from a collaborative, open-source mapping project (OpenStreetMap).
• Explicitly includes features tagged with `waterway`, `water`, or `natural=water`.

Limitations

• Completeness varies by region; urban areas are usually well-mapped, remote areas may be incomplete.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-contributed mapping data exported via the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 11:49:29.285058; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Costa Rica