POI Explorer – Transfer POIs from OpenStreetMap to Sim-Dispatcher
Hey everyone,
some of you might still remember the POI Collector from Mtz93. I took over its further development a while ago because it was the only tool for POIs in Sim-Dispatcher for a long time.
At the same time, I actually wanted to build something completely new and more modern—a Windows application and a small web version. Both got started and then, to be honest, ended up in a drawer for quite a while. Then came all the updates and API changes on the Sim-Dispatcher side, and that was pretty frustrating in some places. Everything dragged on timewise, and at some point I ran out of steam.
A few days ago, user @prof reached out again and asked how things were going with the tool, and somehow that motivated me. Since then, especially the web app has made solid progress.
At some point I was sitting there, looking at all the data in OpenStreetMap, and thought: all of this already exists, you don’t need to enter it twice. That’s how the web app came about that I’m introducing to you here. You link your dispatch center with an OSM area, select the categories you need, the tool pulls the rest from OpenStreetMap and pushes the POIs cleanly into your Sim-Dispatcher. Deduplicated, with addresses, with coordinates.
How it works
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Create a dispatch center.
You take your OAuth credentials from the Sim-Dispatcher Dashboard and put them in the app, then add your import area (district, county, or independent city). The client secret is stored encrypted in the database so it doesn’t end up floating around in plain text anywhere. -
Choose categories.
I’ve mapped over 40 POI categories directly to Sim-Dispatcher types. Hospital, rehab clinic, fire station, ambulance station, police, school, kindergarten, nursing home, doctor’s office, pharmacy, dialysis, blood bank, air rescue, gas station, hotel, train station, airport, church, and more. If your region uses different tagging in OSM, you can add your own tag combinations for each category. -
Import.
The tool queries OSM for POIs in your area, shows you live during the search what’s coming in, optionally fetches missing addresses via Nominatim, and finally passes everything to Sim-Dispatcher. POIs with the same OSM origin are merged, so nothing gets created twice.
What else is included
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Live progress during import.
You see in real time which category is being queried and how many hits are already in. You can abort at any time without leaving half-finished entries in the dispatcher. -
Address enrichment via Nominatim.
If a POI in OSM doesn’t have a proper address, the tool fetches street and city. Requests are throttled to one per second so Nominatim doesn’t complain. -
Hospitals get their own form.
Maximum care provider flag, external admission, automatic patient data transfer, medical departments. Set once as bulk default, then fine-tune per POI if needed. -
Backup and Restore.
A dispatch center plus its POIs can be exported as JSON and either imported back into the same dispatch center or transferred as a clone to another. Handy if you maintain multiple dispatch centers with similar setups. -
Built-in support.
A ticket system is integrated directly into the app. Found a bug? Missing a category? Got an idea? Submit a ticket, I get it via email and on my Discord and reply directly in the system.
Important: This is Alpha
I develop this in my spare time and to be honest it’s still pretty early stage. Individual things can break, data loss on the Sim-Dispatcher side is not excluded, and behavior can change between two releases.
That means: don’t use it with your production dispatch center. Instead, create your own test or sandbox dispatch center, so in the worst case nothing bad is lost. If you notice anything or have wishes, the ticket system is there for exactly that. I’m happy about any feedback.
What’s still in the pipeline
I have a few ideas in the drawer that I don’t want to reveal here because I want to see how far I can take them. Keywords: less manual work for recurring imports, a few quality-of-life things for people with multiple dispatch centers, and in the back of my mind I have something for Sim-Dispatcher that goes beyond just setting up POIs. More on that in the coming weeks when it’s ready.
To be honest, a lot of it depends on how the Sim-Dispatcher API continues to develop. Some things I’d like to build just aren’t possible yet because the right endpoints are missing or are expected to change. If new possibilities come along, I’ll integrate them as soon as it makes sense.
If you have specific wishes for what else you’d like in the tool, write it in the comments or submit it as a ticket directly. A good part of the current feature set came from exactly those kinds of feedback.
Small note
POI Explorer is a private project of mine with no connection to Sim-Dispatcher. There is no business or legal relationship with XENBIT or the developers. “Sim-Dispatcher” is used here only as a name for the interface that the tool communicates with. Use is without support or warranty claims.
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Best regards
pat
