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 30 September 2024 with data extracted on 25 September 2024.

  • 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)

ACT

Australian Captial Territory

496

NSW

Albury City Council

78

NSW

Bathurst Regional Council

58

NSW

Bayside Council

51

NSW

Blacktown City Council

124

NSW

Blue Mountains City Council

23

NSW

Burwood Council

7

NSW

Byron Shire Council

69

NSW

Camden Council

80

NSW

Campbelltown City Council

41

NSW

Canterbury-Bankstown Council

109

NSW

City of Canada Bay Council

20

NSW

City of Parramatta Council

84

NSW

Council of the City of Sydney

26

NSW

Cumberland Council

69

NSW

Dubbo Regional Council

92

NSW

Fairfield City Council

28

NSW

Georges River Council

36

NSW

Hawkesbury City Council

201

NSW

Inner West Council

35

NSW

Ku-ring-gai Council

72

NSW

Lane Cove Municipal Council

10

NSW

Lithgow City Council

52

NSW

Liverpool City Council

56

NSW

Mosman Municipal Council

9

NSW

North Sydney Council

10

NSW

Northern Beaches Council

71

NSW

Orange City Council

57

NSW

Penrith City Council

124

NSW

Port Macquarie-Hastings Council

51

NSW

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council

76

NSW

Randwick City Council

36

NSW

Ryde City Council

41

NSW

Strathfield Municipal Council

14

NSW

Sutherland Shire Council

2

NSW

The Council of the Municipality of Hunters Hill

6

NSW

The Council of the Shire of Hornsby

175

NSW

The Hills Shire Council

185

NSW

Tweed Shire Council

255

NSW

Unincorporated - Sydney Harbour Area

32

NSW

Waverley Council

9

NSW

Willoughby City Council

22

NSW

Woollahra Municipal Council

12

NSW

Yass Valley Council

2

QLD

Brisbane City

328

QLD

Bundaberg Regional

208

QLD

Gold Coast City

445

QLD

Moreton Bay City

3

QLD

Noosa Shire

53

QLD

Redland City

22

QLD

Scenic Rim Regional

6

QLD

Sunshine Coast Regional

18

VIC

Baw Baw Shire

66

VIC

Benalla Rural City

28

VIC

Golden Plains Shire

5

VIC

Greater Geelong City

265

VIC

Latrobe City

77

VIC

Surf Coast Shire

3

VIC

Wangaratta Rural City

32

VIC

Wodonga City

61

Total

4726

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

Change Notifications

Inclusion of addresses from all G-NAF suppliers within the building_address table

Currently, the Buildings products are associated with a subset of addresses from the Geocoded National Address File (G-NAF). The addresses linked to relate to a select group of data contributors to G-NAF.

Commencing with the September 2024 release, we will extend this association to all address contributors used in G-NAF. The significant benefit of this enhancement will be the improved alignment of linked address data with the G-NAF dataset. This will result in improved relationships, in particular, the inclusion of more secondary addresses. The address relationships in the ‘building_address’ table will increase by approximately 7.8 million records.

Buildings products available in GeoPackage format

From the September 2024 release onwards, Buildings will be available in GeoPackage format.

Buildings centroid latitude and longitude in GDA2020

Geoscape has improved the positioning of all centroid_longitude and centroid_latitude values within the buildings layer of Geoscape Buildings in the GDA2020 product packages. This change does not impact the data model of the product or values in the GDA94 packages.

Issues

New Issues

Incorrect metal primary_roof_material assignment

In the latest 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 misclassification 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 latest 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 misclassification and are working with our data supplier to improve this classification for future supplies.

Resolved Issues

No new resolved issues.

Known Issues

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 have noticed that there is an over-capture of Metal roof type in the aerial capture. This occurred primarily for residential buildings. In some areas of the new 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

20,911

176,627

0

0

139,598

0

0

81,830

0

418,966

Retired

11,383

121,511

0

0

126,632

0

0

48,640

1

308,167

Updated

228,745

1,700,714

6,397

57

581,180

73,817

24,861

380,745

94,523

3,091,039

Total

251,664

5,271,780

160,205

449

3,780,505

1,779,239

594,333

4,992,407

2,265,140

19,095,722

% Change

3.93%

1.06%

0.00%

0.00%

0.34%

0.00%

0.00%

0.67%

0.00%

0.58%

Solar Panel

Yes

50,705

635,020

15,835

8

692,281

294,379

32,227

564,352

387,921

2,672,728

No

199,639

3,698,035

111,233

329

2,479,602

1,129,062

403,908

3,617,383

1,459,230

13,098,421

Swimming Pool Adjacent

Yes

18,587

694,674

38,977

0

762,563

128,913

9,062

299,448

349,790

2,302,014

No

231,811

3,651,033

87,562

355

2,418,398

1,293,148

430,050

3,897,756

1,501,789

13,511,902

building_cad

299,260

12,171,308

323,494

554

5,691,238

2,277,630

719,942

9,577,598

4,513,480

35,574,504

building_property

260,686

6,311,312

265,448

0

5,680,666

2,189,743

625,559

11,798,291

2,280,692

29,412,397

building_address

904,607

11,656,738

302,156

151

9,683,927

2,919,559

733,440

8,722,143

3,987,769

38,910,490

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.