Does anyone know what the fastest way to import OpenStreetMap data into an ArcGIS File Geodatabase (*.gdb) is? I'm using ArcGis 10.2.x and I see two options: OpenStreetMap Loader, which handles a *.bz2 input, or the file loader from the OpenStreetMap Editor toolbox, which handles a *.osm input.
I have to import about 100GB of OSM data into a Geodatabase. The data is all data with the 'highway' tag. Even splitting this up into smaller tiles with osmconvert and running these imports in parallel will take many days using the OpenStreetMap Editor file loader. In case it changes the answer, my computer can handle a lot (64GB RAM, nice processor and HDs etc).
Best Answer
You are not giving a whole lot of information here...
What version of the ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap are you using? The latest version has seen some major improvements in terms of processing speed, and added much better multipolygon handling, meaning you get more accurate and better polygon output, close to what osm2pgsql achieves. Still, especially multipolygon creation, is a major technical hurdle and processing burden for any application working with OSM data.
What data do you need? The editor by default converts all data in an osm file, so if that data includes multipolygons as well, it may take a while... If you are just interested in a road network, it might be better to filter out the line data first using one the open source tools for that, and convert the remaining data to a File Geodatabase using the Load OSM File tool.
That said, 100GB is a lot, if you are not prepared to wait a couple of days for certain processes to finish, than you should probably not be handling this type of datasets at all... (unless you intend to do Big Data processing in a cluster, and have the facilities for that to shorten process time, ESRI has tools for putting data in a Big Data cluster).
Anyway, I have processed uncompressed XML osm of up to 25GB using the Editor's Load OSM File tool, and if I remember it well, for the latest release, it took around 3-4 days max on a Core i5 quadcore processor.