New Zealand Waterways from OpenStreetMap for Environmental Analysis

OpenStreetMap export provides water features across New Zealand, including rivers, streams, canals, lakes, and ponds tagged with `waterway`, `water`, or `natural=water`. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) maintains this export on HDX. The dataset was last updated on 2026-05-14.

Use Cases

• Flood-risk modelling based on the spatial distribution of rivers, streams, and water bodies.
• Watershed analysis using the network of waterways and water bodies.
• Creating environmental basemap context for regional planning using the mapped water features.
• Cross-referencing local field knowledge with volunteered geographic information on water features.

Strengths

• Includes multiple water feature types (rivers, streams, canals, lakes, ponds) based on specific OSM tags.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats (GEOPACKAGE, SHP, GEOJSON, JSON).
• Data is licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL-1.0), allowing for sharing and adaptation.

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 is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-contributed mapping and export by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 22:24:01.660542; freshness should be verified.

Geography

New Zealand