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 June 2025 with data extracted on 18 June 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

Shoalhaven City Council

43

NT

Alice Springs Municipality

54

QLD

Lockyer Valley Regional

3

QLD

Toowoomba Regional

164

SA

The Corporation of the City of Whyalla

26

SA

UIA Whyalla

9

VIC

Banyule City

24

VIC

Bayside City

15

VIC

Boroondara City

60

VIC

Brimbank City

73

VIC

Darebin City

22

VIC

Glen Eira City

37

VIC

Greater Dandenong City

1

VIC

Greater Geelong City

59

VIC

Hobsons Bay City

63

VIC

Hume City

13

VIC

Kingston City

4

VIC

Knox City

54

VIC

Macedon Ranges Shire

411

VIC

Manningham City

88

VIC

Maribyrnong City

31

VIC

Maroondah City

28

VIC

Melbourne City

38

VIC

Melton City

32

VIC

Merri-Bek City

20

VIC

Mitchell Shire

217

VIC

Monash City

81

VIC

Moonee Valley City

32

VIC

Moorabool Shire

10

VIC

Nillumbik Shire

4

VIC

Port Phillip City

21

VIC

Stonnington City

26

VIC

Whitehorse City

64

VIC

Whittlesea City

232

VIC

Wyndham City

447

VIC

Yarra City

20

WA

City of Albany

48

WA

City of Armadale

447

WA

City of Bayswater

35

WA

City of Belmont

40

WA

City of Canning

65

WA

City of Cockburn

150

WA

City of Fremantle

20

WA

City of Gosnells

99

WA

City of Joondalup

99

WA

City of Kalamunda

278

WA

City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder

40

WA

City of Kwinana

120

WA

City of Mandurah

92

WA

City of Melville

53

WA

City of Nedlands

20

WA

City of Perth

20

WA

City of Rockingham

212

WA

City of South Perth

20

WA

City of Stirling

105

WA

City of Subiaco

6

WA

City of Swan

913

WA

City of Vincent

11

WA

City of Wanneroo

249

WA

Shire of Beverley

4

WA

Shire of Boddington

6

WA

Shire of Chittering

221

WA

Shire of Gingin

1

WA

Shire of Mundaring

335

WA

Shire of Murray

462

WA

Shire of Northam

6

WA

Shire of Peppermint Grove

1

WA

Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale

559

WA

Shire of Toodyay

64

WA

Shire of Wandering

99

WA

Town of Bassendean

10

WA

Town of Cambridge

22

WA

Town of Claremont

5

WA

Town of Cottesloe

4

WA

Town of East Fremantle

4

WA

Town of Mosman Park

4

WA

Town of Victoria Park

18

Total

7,493

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

Change Notifications

National Buildings 4.0 - Update

Geoscape’s Buildings product is evolving into a new and enhanced package called “National Buildings 4.0”, scheduled for release in March 2026.

This evolution brings improved attribution, better integration capabilities, and a stronger foundation for delivering future innovation to building insights.

National Buildings will be packaged to consist of a base “Buildings” dataset, with additional aspatial “Insights Packs” available that are designed to provide specific understanding or knowledge about a particular topic/theme for an industry or use-case.

Geoscape is committed to supporting current customers through this transition. Over the coming months, we’ll be in touch to understand the impacts to customer processes, share sample data, and provide guidance to facilitate a smooth changeover.

Issues

New Issues

No new issues to note.

Resolved Issues

No resolved issues to note.

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

15

0

0

12

2

0

111,134

250,807

361,970

Retired

0

18

0

0

10

1

0

77,078

130,381

207,488

Updated

1,503

28,896

427

0

14,811

6,006

3,224

1,227,843

1,251,594

2,534,304

Total

251,664

5,395,708

166,891

449

3,825,857

1,789,224

598,595

5,043,104

2,386,258

19,457,750

% Change

0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

0.00%

0.68%

5.31%

0.8%

Solar Panel

Yes

50,705

708,830

18,904

8

736,680

297,614

35,511

605,745

421,563

2,875,560

No

199,639

3,796,338

115,220

329

2,500,918

1,139,853

405,608

3,662,204

1,570,187

13,390,296

Swimming Pool Adjacent

Yes

18,587

754,146

46,097

0

795,794

129,547

10,058

327,106

377,885

2,459,220

No

231,811

3,761,142

87,433

355

2,449,285

1,306,360

433,909

3,954,343

1,617,172

13,841,810

building_cad

299,470

12,466,292

397,974

554

5,769,350

2,290,849

727,797

9,638,730

5,216,449

36,807,465

building_property

260,675

12,710,483

322,838

0

5,756,537

2,213,304

630,634

11,844,196

2,403,844

36,142,511

building_address

907,652

11,945,861

324,653

151

10,062,320

2,962,387

740,837

8,807,595

4,469,566

40,221,022

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.