BizAt

BizAt (BizAt) is free software that reads the Open Street Map global database file and extracts information about businesses, cities, and intersections. The output data covers the entire planet.

The software is a set of standalone (no-dependency) Perl scripts that run under control of two top-level Perl scripts. The code must run on a Linux system because it executes Linux commands.

Businesses

When a business is specified as a node, or if a label location is specified, the business is located at that specified latitude and longitude. If the business is specified as a way (an outline) or a relation (such as pointers to an inner and outer way), the midpoint location is calculated, and used as the business location. The midpoint is the center of a bounding box that is defined by the maximum and minimum latitude and longitude of all the nodes.

The business info is separated into two categories. Both categories exclude chain businesses and any business that has multiple locations. These exclusions are based on the sharing of a domain name, and in some cases based on having the same business name.

The main category contains general-interest single-location businesses that include restaurants, cafés, bakeries, delicatessens, bookstores, hardware stores, and toy stores. These kinds of businesses compete against either Amazon or easy-to-find chain businesses.

The other category contains businesses that are not always of interest to everyone. This category includes dentists, hair salons, veterinary clinics, and auto repair shops.

The scripts can be edited to exclude any of these default kinds of businesses, or to include other kinds of businesses.

A copy of the output data is available as separate files to allow faster lookups at any location on the planet.

Cities

This software also gets the name and midpoint (or label location) of every village, county, district, city, province, state, nation, and other kind of administrative boundary.

Intersections

This software also gets street intersections. Each intersection has a latitude and longitude and two way (or relation) IDs that link to the names of the two intersecting streets.

Intersections can be used to add some anonymity to an exact latitude and longitude by "snapping" to the nearest intersection. This approach protects against reverse-calculating a user's exact location based on the locations of the listed businesses and their distances from a center location.