Malawi Populated Places and Settlements from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports provide named cities, towns, villages, suburbs, and residential land areas for Malawi. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) compiled this data, which was last updated on 2026-05-14. Completeness varies by region, with urban areas likely being more detailed than remote locations.

Use Cases

• Create demographic context maps based on named settlements.
• Perform settlement-level targeting for aid distribution using residential landuse data.
• Analyze population distribution patterns from categorized place data.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative world map.
• Includes multiple export formats: GEOPACKAGE, KML, HTML, SHP, GEOJSON, JSON.
• Covers both named places (`place=*`) and residential land areas (`landuse=residential`).

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Completeness varies by region; remote areas may be incomplete.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-collaborative mapping, exported by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 20:55:20.527398; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Malawi