[OSM-dev] Can I get "distance across dry land" with OpenStreetMap

[Josh Doe]

I'm not sure if you'll find what you're looking for in use by current
OSM software. You're thinking more about AI pathfinding in video
games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinding

If you find something that ingests OSM data and can do this sort of
routing I'd love to hear about it!
-Josh

On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have the following problems I want to solve with OpenStreetMap data:
>
>  * For points A and B, detect if either one is on an island, and that
>    you therefore can't traverse between them without a swim.
>
>  * For points A and B, get the distance between them by land. E.g. if
>    A and B are on opposite sites of a fjord.
>
> The routing libraries I've found seem to all assume that I want to
> route across roads, whereas for this task all I need is just a
> coastline shapfile of the planet. I'd then find out if A and B are on
> different coastlines, or the shortest path between them on land.
>
> Is there anything that does this already? I'm fairly sure I could do
> some cleverness with PostGIS to find out whether the line between
> points A and B crosses the ocean, but what I actually want is the
> distance between them sans ocean.
>
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