UAE Populated Places and Settlements from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap data for the United Arab Emirates includes named cities, towns, villages, suburbs, and residential land areas. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) exported this data, which was last updated on 2026-05-13. Completeness varies by region, with urban areas usually well-mapped and remote areas potentially incomplete.

Use Cases

• Demographic context analysis based on named settlements and residential areas.
• Settlement-level targeting for humanitarian or commercial projects based on place and landuse tags.
• Population distribution analysis based on the geographic distribution of residential land.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative world map.
• Includes multiple export formats (GEOPACKAGE, KML, HTML, SHP, GEOJSON, JSON).
• License is ODbL-1.0, a well-known open data license.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-built, collaborative mapping.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-13 19:31:42.457112; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Arab Emirates