Buildings

Disclaimer

Geoscape Australia believes this publication to be correct at the time of printing and does not accept responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of the information herein. Readers should rely on their own skill and judgement to apply information to particular issues.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission of Geoscape Australia.

Overview

Buildings is a digital dataset representing buildings across Australia. The Buildings dataset has relationships with the G-NAF, Cadastre, Property and Administrative Boundaries products produced by Geoscape Australia.

Data quality and potential capture timelines will vary across Australia based on three categories. Each category has been developed based on several factors defined by the population distribution (categorised based on population size), industrial/commercial activities, the probability of natural events (e.g. flooding) and the image source.

  • Urban (satellite source) - areas with a population greater than 200, or with significant industrial/commercial activity in a visual assessment, digitised from satellite imagery

  • Urban (aerial source) - areas with a population greater than 200, or with significant industrial/commercial activity in a visual assessment, digitised from aerial imagery

  • Rural – all other areas

Geoscape welcomes your feedback on the Buildings product. We also publish regular product development updates on our website ( www.geoscape.com.au ).

Release Summary

This product was released to customers on 31 March 2025 with data extracted on 19 March 2025.

  • This release is a full national data population for Version 3.3 of the Buildings product, described by the Buildings Product Guide v3.3.

Any issues that have been identified for this release are described in the Issues section.

This release includes updates for the areas listed in the table below.

Locations of updated areas by State

State

Location

Urban Area (km2)

NSW

Armidale Regional Council

724

NSW

Ballina Shire Council

312

NSW

Bayside Council

5

NSW

Bellingen Shire Council

16

NSW

Blacktown City Council

7

NSW

Blue Mountains City Council

545

NSW

Byron Shire Council

258

NSW

Camden Council

61

NSW

Campbelltown City Council

206

NSW

Canterbury-Bankstown Council

2

NSW

Central Coast Council

955

NSW

Cessnock City Council

668

NSW

Clarence Valley Council

189

NSW

Coffs Harbour City Council

471

NSW

Dungog Shire Council

243

NSW

Federation Council

75

NSW

Georges River Council

10

NSW

Goulburn Mulwaree Council

751

NSW

Griffith City Council

122

NSW

Hawkesbury City Council

400

NSW

Ku-ring-gai Council

15

NSW

Lake Macquarie City Council

705

NSW

Lismore City Council

239

NSW

Lithgow City Council

53

NSW

Liverpool City Council

67

NSW

Maitland City Council

393

NSW

Mid-Coast Council

22

NSW

Murray River Council

68

NSW

Newcastle City Council

215

NSW

Northern Beaches Council

200

NSW

Parkes Shire Council

168

NSW

Penrith City Council

26

NSW

Port Stephens Council

564

NSW

Shellharbour City Council

104

NSW

Shoalhaven City Council

212

NSW

Singleton Council

165

NSW

Sutherland Shire Council

362

NSW

Tamworth Regional Council

333

NSW

The Council of the Shire of Hornsby

121

NSW

The Hills Shire Council

152

NSW

Tweed Shire Council

34

NSW

Unincorporated - Botany Bay Area

21

NSW

Upper Lachlan Shire Council

14

NSW

Uralla Shire Council

73

NSW

Wagga Wagga City Council

417

NSW

Wingecarribee Shire Council

356

NSW

Wollondilly Shire Council

236

NSW

Wollongong City Council

563

NT

Alice Springs Municipality

262

NT

Darwin Municipality

135

NT

Darwin Waterfront Precinct Municipality

1

NT

Litchfield Municipality

629

NT

MacDonnell Region

140

NT

Northern Territory Rates Act (Prescribed Area A) Area

43

NT

Palmerston Municipality

77

QLD

Brisbane City

20

QLD

Fraser Coast Regional

266

QLD

Gladstone Regional

151

QLD

Gold Coast City

236

QLD

Gympie Regional

182

QLD

Ipswich City

53

QLD

Lockyer Valley Regional

853

QLD

Logan City

354

QLD

Moreton Bay City

499

QLD

Noosa Shire

239

QLD

Redland City

40

QLD

Scenic Rim Regional

274

QLD

Somerset Regional

9

QLD

Sunshine Coast Regional

1,477

QLD

Toowoomba Regional

567

SA

City of Mount Gambier

34

SA

The Corporation of the City of Whyalla

318

SA

The DC of Grant

171

SA

UIA Whyalla

66

TAS

Brighton Council

41

TAS

Burnie City Council

52

TAS

Central Coast Council

37

TAS

Clarence City Council

64

TAS

Glenorchy City Council

37

TAS

Hobart City Council

33

TAS

Kingborough Council

43

TAS

Launceston City Council

118

TAS

Meander Valley Council

24

TAS

Northern Midlands Council

77

TAS

Waratah-Wynyard Council

40

TAS

West Tamar Council

58

VIC

Campaspe Shire

71

VIC

Golden Plains Shire

46

VIC

Greater Bendigo City

256

VIC

Greater Geelong City

693

VIC

Greater Shepparton City

711

VIC

Indigo Shire

155

VIC

Moira Shire

3

VIC

Moyne Shire

12

VIC

Queenscliffe Borough

10

VIC

Strathbogie Shire

9

VIC

Surf Coast Shire

184

VIC

Warrnambool City

75

VIC

Wyndham City

9

WA

City of Albany

141

WA

City of Greater Geraldton

181

WA

City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder

162

WA

Shire of Chapman Valley

33

Total

22,389

Spatial files of the updated areas are available upon request via support@geoscape.com.au.

Change Notifications

No changes to note.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues to note.

Resolved Issues

State missing from address attribute in building_address

Geoscape has identified ~5.3 million (13.69%) building_address records with the state part missing from the address attribute value for the December 2024 release. For example, the address value of ‘14 CUTHBERT ST, BROADMEADOWS 3047’ should have had the state included to be ‘14 CUTHBERT ST, BROADMEADOWS VIC 3047’. This issue has been resolved for the March 2025 release.

Known Issues

Incorrect metal primary_roof_material assignment

In the update areas for the September 2024 release, we noticed that a large number of buildings have been classified with a primary_roof_material of ‘Metal’. On investigation, it was identified that this classification was not correct in many cases and so the primary_roof_material values were rolled back to the previous (June 2024) values where possible. We are looking to update these areas in an upcoming release to resolve remaining mis-classification and are working with our data supplier to improve this classification for future supplies.

Incorrect roof_type, roof_shape and roof_slope assignment

In the update areas for the September 2024 release, we noticed that a large number of buildings have been classified with a roof_type and roof shape of ‘Flat’ and roof_slope of ‘0’. On investigation, it was identified that this classification was not correct in many cases and so these values were rolled back to the previous (June 2024) values where possible. We are looking to update these areas in an upcoming release to resolve remaining mis-classification and are working with our data supplier to improve this classification for future supplies.

Centroid not within building polygon

When mapping the building centroid from the centroid_longitude and centroid_latitude there will be occurrences where the point does not fall inside the building geometry. This occurs because of the complexity of the building geometry and impacts < 0.1% of buildings. A fix for this issue will be investigated for a future release.

Swimming_pool_adjacent incorrectly ‘null’

Some records containing attribution for swimming_pool_review_date also contain ‘null’ attribution for swimming pool adjacent where the allowed values are ‘no’ or ‘yes’. This affects < 0.25% of buildings.

Duplication of buildings between update areas

New and updated buildings are captured within Areas of Interest (AOIs). Buildings that intersect two adjacent AOIs are duplicated. This issue affects approximately 1,800 buildings.

Duplicate building polygons

There are 8,417 buildings with duplicate geometries, resulting in 8,427 additional building polygons present. A fix for this issue will be investigated for a future release.

Roof colour assignment

There is an over classification of light roof colours primarily in the Melbourne region. Advances in processing has improved this issue in recent releases.

Building position offset from imagery

There is evidence of buildings having a horizontal shift of approximately 0.5m in the NSW suburbs of Parramatta and the Dee Why area. This has occurred where the new shift to the digital elevation model has not worked as intended. As we continue to refine the aerial derived building processes, we’ll seek to resolve this issue.

Over-capture of metal roof material in aerial supplies

In the June 2022 release, we noticed that there was an over-capture of Metal roof type in the aerial capture. This occurred primarily for residential buildings. In some areas of the aerial capture (e.g. Perth and Cairns), Metal classification was actually improved overall in relation to the previous satellite capture (satellite previously incorrectly classified Metal roofs as Tile). We are working with our production partners to improve the accuracy of the roof_material attribute, which can be affected by image smoothing, causing Tile roofs to be incorrectly classified as Metal.

Future Considerations

This section outlines enhancements or changes under consideration, but not planned into a specific release. For further details on future initiatives, please contact Geoscape Support.

Legacy ‘CAD’ naming

The building_cad table contains a field that is called ‘cad_pid’, while the Cadastre product has an attribute called ‘cadastre_pid’. We have input the ‘cadastre_pid’ values into this ‘cad_pid’ field to not affect customer processes with attribute name changes. In addition, the table name of ‘building_cad’ no longer matches the Cadastre product. There is no current plan to change either the ‘building_cad’ table name or ‘cad_pid’ field name.

Additional Total Floor Area attribute

Geoscape intends to introduce a new total_floor_area attribute to a future release of the Geoscape Buildings product. This attribute will provide the estimated sum of floor space across all levels of a building. At the time of the addition of this new attribute there will be a minor increment to the Geoscape Buildings product version.

Annex A – Release Counts

For the buildings table the additional, retired, updated and total building counts, as well as the percent change to the previous release have been listed in the table below. For the aspatial tables the total record counts have been listed.

TABLE

STATISTIC

FLAG

ACT

NSW

NT

OT

QLD

SA

TAS

VIC

WA

TOTAL

buildings

Additional

0

264,967

29,037

0

102,156

23,981

32,194

57,777

14,713

524,825

Retired

0

151,141

22,351

0

67,115

14,823

27,932

39,642

14,021

337,025

Updated

124,125

1,371,110

77,853

0

566,963

41,643

243,511

164,803

131,261

2,721,269

Total

251,664

5,395,711

166,891

449

3,825,855

1,789,223

598,595

5,009,048

2,265,832

19,303,268

% Change

0.00%

2.16%

4.17%

0.00%

0.92%

0.51%

0.72%

0.36%

0.03%

0.98%

Solar Panel

Yes

50,705

708,830

18,904

8

736,681

297,614

35,511

576,367

389,765

2,814,385

No

199,639

3,796,341

115,220

329

2,500,915

1,139,852

405,608

3,645,190

1,459,279

13,262,373

Swimming Pool Adjacent

Yes

18,587

754,144

46,098

0

795,794

129,547

10,058

308,028

351,336

2,413,592

No

231,811

3,761,147

87,432

355

2,449,283

1,306,359

433,909

3,927,435

1,501,981

13,699,712

building_cad

299,419

12,458,423

397,987

554

5,764,246

2,290,169

727,646

9,545,948

4,524,640

36,009,032

building_property

260,681

12,704,098

322,849

0

5,753,402

2,209,150

630,642

11,734,797

2,282,157

35,897,776

building_address

910,054

11,912,589

326,424

151

9,863,549

2,941,086

739,346

8,773,143

3,989,700

39,456,042

References

[Aerometrex, 2023]

Aerometrex. Aerial imagery. Raster Dataset, 2023. URL: https://aerometrex.com.au/.

[Geoscape, 2023]

Geoscape. Local government areas 2.0. 2023. URL: https://docs.geoscape.com.au/projects/lga_guide/en/stable/index.html.