After doing the Romanian OSM node density map, i wanted to do something more globally

The map was created by exporting using Qgis Print Composer in 4 different 24806x17716px , because of the limitations of QGIS that does not allow the export of bigger files yet.

The date was obtained using overpass-api, but for simplicity, if you want to do something similar, use the europe planet extract.

There where over 7 million shop,amenity, tourism and leisure POI in Europe that where combined in a single file using the Qgis Plugin > Vector > Data Management Tools > Merge ShapeFiles to one

Using Qgis plugin mmqgis i created a network of around 800.000 hexagons, and using the Qgis plugin “count in polygon” i was able to figure it how many POI are in each hexagon. To get to a more correct answer, i calculated the area for each of the 800.000 hexagons, that is ranging from about 18 square kilometers in south of Sweden to 28 sq km in Madrid, Spain and did a POI/area to get a more exact answer, POI per sq km

TOP 200 POI by number or POI

And the download link

OpenStreetMap POI density per km2

Download link

1.61 GigaPixel OpenStreetMap POI Map of Europe

[Explore the 1.61 gigapixel on photosynth :] (https://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=cc38ddc9-5f75-45c9-8ee7-3d1388439a3e)

Just how much of Europe have at least 1 POI per km2 ?

1. 361701 km2, similar with the area or Germany, have a density of just 1 POI per km2
2. 169428 km2, similar with the area or Greece, have a density 2 POI per km2
3. 97592 km2, similar with the area or Hungary, have a density 3 POI per km2
4. 68037 km2, similar with the area or Lithuania, have a density 4 POI per km2
5. 48142 km2, similar with the area or Slovakia, have a density 5 POI per km2
6. 35867 km2, similar with the area or Moldova, have a density 6 POI per km2

The total sum is 983412 km2, to put this in perspective, this means the area of Ukraine and Germany together. The rest of Europe has a density that is less then 1 POI per km2

What i learned.

• Trying to so something as big as this is impossible in QGIS < 2.4
• Except UK, Germany and neighboring county’s, the rest of europe has good POI coverage only in big and medium cities
• There is still no simple way to extract all the POI of a country or a continent ( amenity, shop, leisure, tourism )
• There is no possible way to export this map in a interactive way, at least from the Qgis Plugins
  It would be possbile only country by country, if somebody with coding skills could make qgis2leaf work with rule-based colors