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HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format v5)

Open Beta

.h5 · application/x-hdf5

HDF5 is a binary self-describing container for scientific data with a filesystem inside the file: groups (folders), datasets (arrays), attributes (metadata). On osm2cdr the .h5 export works honestly like this: each OSM layer becomes an HDF5 group holding longitude and latitude datasets (feature centroids) plus one dataset per attribute field as strings. It is a self-describing container of coordinates and attributes, not a gridded scoring raster or DEM cube — the exporter does not compute such layers. Written via h5py; readable in h5py, HDFView, MATLAB, R, IDL.

Export HDF5 now ✨ Open Beta — free, no limits

Key Features

✓One HDF5 group per layer; inside — longitude/latitude datasets (centroids) and one dataset per attribute field

✓Root and group attributes: title, source, bbox, feature_count, geometry_type

✓Attributes written as variable-length UTF-8 strings, coordinates as float64

✓Multi-level fallback: h5py → GDAL HDF5 driver → gzip-JSON with a similar logical structure

Example HDF5 export (central Moscow, 1x0.5 km) — Example: central Moscow, ~1×0.5 km, medium detail

What Program Opens HDF5 Files

The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format v5) (.h5) files exported from OSM2CDR:

💻h5py (Python) 💻HDFView (HDF Group) 💻MATLAB 📐R (rhdf5) 💻Panoply (NASA GISS)

Format specifications

Open standard
2D only
Lossless (no quality loss)
Stores feature attributes
Output: 1 file
One HDF5 group per layer holding lon/lat centroid datasets plus one string dataset per attribute; a self-describing container, not a gridded raster cube. Fallback to gzip-JSON.

Who Uses HDF5 Maps

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Packing coordinates and attributes of several OSM layers of an area into one self-describing .h5 for later scientific analysis

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Feeding data into an h5py/PyTables pipeline where a group-per-layer hierarchy with attribute metadata is convenient

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Long-term archival of point data in a format stably read by scientific libraries for decades

How to Export HDF5

Select area

Draw a rectangle or polygon on the interactive map at osm2cdr

Choose HDF5

Select HDF5 (Hierarchical Data Format v5) from the list of 127 available export formats

Export

Click Export and receive your .h5 file in 1-5 minutes

Download

Download the ready HDF5 file and open it in h5py (Python)

Popular maps in HDF5

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does the file contain scoring rasters (Walk/Green) or DEM cubes? ▼

How do I inspect the .h5 structure? ▼

How does HDF5 differ from NetCDF in our export? ▼

Related Formats

Frequently Exported Together

HDF5+🌍NetCDF 🔬Zarr 🏔SRTM HGT

format

HDF5 format: scientific hierarchical container — OSM gridded analytics export

HDF5 from NCSA/HDF Group 1998: chunked binary, parallel I/O, climate + physics + geo, OSM analytics export to .h5.