National 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 the capture_method (Aerial or Satellite) and capture_resolution (e.g. 7cm, 50cm) of the record. Aerial capture includes enhanced attribution in comparison to Satellite capture.

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 2026 with data extracted on 19 March 2026.

  • This release is a full national data population for Version 4.0 of the Buildings product, described by the Buildings Product Guide v4.0.

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 Capital Territory

498

NSW

Albury City Council

73

NSW

Armidale Regional Council

26

NSW

Ballina Shire Council

31

NSW

Bayside Council

3

NSW

Blue Mountains City Council

84

NSW

Camden Council

19

NSW

Campbelltown City Council

41

NSW

Central Coast Council

137

NSW

Cessnock City Council

20

NSW

Georges River Council

15

NSW

Goulburn Mulwaree Council

30

NSW

Hawkesbury City Council

64

NSW

Ku-ring-gai Council

24

NSW

Lake Macquarie City Council

236

NSW

Lismore City Council

37

NSW

Maitland City Council

87

NSW

Mid-Coast Council

6

NSW

Newcastle City Council

119

NSW

Northern Beaches Council

63

NSW

Port Stephens Council

94

NSW

Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council

76

NSW

Shellharbour City Council

42

NSW

Shoalhaven City Council

45

NSW

Sutherland Shire Council

98

NSW

Tamworth Regional Council

38

NSW

The Council of the Shire of Hornsby

55

NSW

The Hills Shire Council

2

NSW

Tweed Shire Council

121

NSW

Wollondilly Shire Council

5

NSW

Wollongong City Council

162

NSW

Yass Valley Council

2

NT

Darwin Municipality

93

NT

Darwin Waterfront Precinct Municipality

1

NT

Litchfield Municipality

203

NT

Northern Territory Rates Act (Prescribed Area A) Area

25

NT

Palmerston Municipality

60

QLD

Brisbane City

80

QLD

Gold Coast City

439

QLD

Ipswich City

1

QLD

Lockyer Valley Regional

1

QLD

Logan City

650

QLD

Redland City

179

QLD

Scenic Rim Regional

95

QLD

Toowoomba Regional

159

VIC

Wodonga City

57

Total

4,396

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

Change Notifications

National Buildings 4.0

This release marks the initial launch of National Buildings 4.0, presented as a base “Buildings” dataset with additional aspatial “Insight Packs” that are designed to provide specific understanding or knowledge about a particular topic/theme for an industry or use-case.

For more information on the change to this new structure, see the transition information sheet here: National-Buildings-Transition-Infosheet.pdf

The changes will affect the request and download experience in both Geoscape Hub and Datasets API. For more information, see:

  • Annex B – Changes to the Geoscape Hub request and download process

  • Annex C – Changes to accessing Buildings data via the Datasets API

Change to product version numbering (Effective March 2026)

From this release, we have updated version numbering to a new format: MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT (e.g. 004-000-001). This approach provides a clear and consistent structure, making it easier for users to identify product versions and understand update levels. The change is intended to improve transparency, reduce ambiguity, and support more efficient integration and usage of our data products.

Change to product folder structure (Effective March 2026)

From this release, we have updated the folder structure in product packages. Previously, we provided a contents.txt file and a number of internal folders. The .ZIP file packages now only contain data files. We have applied this change to simplify accessing the data.

Legacy ‘CAD’ naming

Version 3 of the Buildings product had a building_cad table that contained a field that was called cad_pid, while the Cadastre product has an attribute called cadastre_pid.

For National Buildings 4.0, we have changed the name of the building_cad table to ‘building_cadastre’ and have changed the cad_pid field to cadastre_pid to align with the Cadastre product.

Linkage changes to building_cadastre and building_property

The tolerance used to associate buildings with cadastre and property features has been refined. In this release, we have removed low-confidence relationships (relationship_confidence = 20) where a higher-confidence relationship (≥80) already existed for the same building. These low-confidence links were typically caused by geometric misalignment and did not represent meaningful real‑world relationships. As a result, record counts in the building_cadastre and building_property tables have decreased. This change has also enabled improvements to building_address linkages that were previously created indirectly via cadastre or property relationships.

Linkage changes to building_address at multi-address/building sites

To improve the accuracy of building–address associations, refinements have been made to the address selection and linkage logic used during building processing. Approximately 5 million lower‑confidence building_address records that did not meet established confidence thresholds have been removed as part of this refinement.

Changes to address_pid where the building_address record is essentially unchanged

Some address_pid values in the building_address table have changed in this release, even where the building remains linked to an address with the same address label (or address_detail_pid) as in December 2025. This is due to the introduction of additional G‑NAF addresses into the linkage process and updated deduplication logic, which may now deterministically select a different address_pid representing the same address label. In cases where addresses share a label but have different geometries, they may not be deduplicated if they link to different buildings (for example, where the geometries fall within different cadastre or property features). These changes may also result in differences to relationship_confidence values where the selected address geometry differs from that used in the December 2025 release.

Product File Changes

The alteration of the National Buildings 4.0 update process has resulted in product file changes. These changes include, but may not be limited to, those summarised below:

  • All internal production processes have been cut over from GDA94 to GDA2020. This has resulted in slight (usually sub-millimetre) changes to the geometries of the output files. The building_pid values have not changed due to this.

  • To align the naming of the Australia region product files with the state and territory files, an 'australia_' prefix has been added to the table and layer names.

  • For example:

    December 2025 > March 2026

    file name: buildings.gdb > australia_buildings.gdb

    layer name: buildings > australia_buildings

  • Due to the changes in processing and therefore tooling, the automatic identifier for File Geodatabase files (OBJECT_ID) is now the first attribute rather than the last.

  • GeoJSON file outputs are now in pretty print format, as opposed to previously being single-line format. This will not affect the contained data values. JSON files continue to be provided in single-line format. We are looking to align this formatting in a future release.

  • In GeoJSON and JSON file formats, spaces separating the file components that had previously been removed are now retained. This will not change attribute values but will potentially lead to file size increases.

  • In GeoJSON, JSON and PSV files, date fields are now represented in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2026-03-31) where previously they were provided in DD-MM-YYYY format (e.g. 31-03-2026).

Issues

New Issues

8 MapINFO TAB Geometry issues

We have become aware of 8 geometries in the Buildings MapINFO TAB file format that contain self-intersections due to the way MapINFO TAB alters geometries on extract. We will look into resolving this in a future release.

Incorrect date_last_captured in address_pool

An issue has been identified with the date_last_captured attribute in the address_pool table for some records where pool_flag = ‘No’. This behaviour occurs where cadastre parcels intersect multiple update areas with differing capture dates. In these cases, the address is assigned the most recent date_last_captured value, even when the corresponding update area does not represent the primary update area based on the majority area of overlap with the cadastre parcel. This behaviour affects a subset of 262,668 records in the address_pool table where the date_last_captured may not align with the capture date of the update area with the greatest overlap with the cadastre parcel.

Resolved Issues

Centroid not within building polygon

When mapping the building centroid from the centroid_longitude and centroid_latitude, there were previously occurrences in Buildings v3 where the point did not fall inside the building geometry. This occurred because of the complexity of the building geometry or the rounding of the building centroid to greater precision down to 6 decimal places and impacted < 0.1% of buildings. A fix for this issue has been applied for the March 2026 release by increasing the number of decimal places in the centroid_latitude and centroid_longitude values to 9.

Duplication of buildings between update areas

New and updated buildings are captured within Areas of Interest (AOIs). Buildings that intersected two adjacent AOIs were sometimes duplicated in the past. This issue affected approximately 1,800 buildings. In the March 2026 release there are no duplicate building geometries.

Duplicate building polygons

There were 8,417 buildings with duplicate geometries which resulted in 8,427 additional building polygons being present in previous releases. In the March 2026 release there are no duplicate building geometries.

Building position offset from imagery

There was evidence of buildings having a horizontal shift of approximately 0.5m in the NSW suburbs of Parramatta and the Dee Why area. This occurred where the new shift to the digital elevation model has not worked as intended. This issue has been resolved in the March 2026 release.

Known Issues

Perth Building Height Adjustment

An error was identified in the source data used to generate building heights for an area of Perth during the September 2025 release. A limited number of buildings in that area were affected, and heights for these buildings were reverted to the March 2025 values for the December 2025 release. A refresh of the area is planned within the next year. This issue did not impact other areas. Additional checks have been implemented to prevent similar issues in future processing.

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.

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.

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.

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

ACT

NSW

NT

OT

QLD

SA

TAS

VIC

WA

TOTAL

buildings

Additional

8,840

54,280

4,632

0

36,504

0

0

1,810

0

106,066

Retired

4,598

35,268

2,521

0

19,155

13

0

754

6

62,315

Updated

247,925

5,376,236

164,370

449

3,827,616

1,802,963

598,595

5,088,033

2,287,360

19,393,547

Total

256,765

5,430,516

169,002

449

3,864,120

1,802,963

598,595

5,089,843

2,287,360

19,499,613

% Change

1.68%

0.35%

1.26%

0.00%

0.45%

0.00%

0.00%

0.02%

0.00%

0.22%

building_cadastre

297,863

12,245,439

396,040

518

5,606,131

2,169,036

710,175

9,240,933

4,517,294

35,183,429

building_property

260,721

12,519,929

321,130

0

5,695,071

2,094,253

615,946

11,429,355

2,311,470

35,247,875

building_address

839,484

11,822,931

304,154

131

6,812,168

2,475,225

739,261

8,715,728

3,914,727

35,623,809

building_height

255,446

4,442,148

135,394

337

3,225,856

1,443,360

404,965

4,263,013

1,860,206

16,030,725

building_roof

255,446

4,532,074

136,138

337

3,274,237

1,450,374

440,098

4,204,362

1,900,725

16,193,791

building_solar

255,447

4,543,708

136,235

337

3,275,876

1,451,266

441,119

4,314,769

1,901,150

16,319,907

address_pool

247,171

4,302,561

94,906

1,108

2,787,823

977,915

277,748

3,781,265

1,422,339

13,892,836

Annex B – Changes to the Geoscape Hub request and download process

For “Building Footprints” customers

  • You only need to download one file.

  • From the Geoscape Hub menu, go to the Datasets > Standard page.

  • In the Product field, select National Buildings.

  • Enter your preferred Region, Format and Datum (Note: Footprint data will be available in more formats than it was previously).

  • Enable the toggle Latest Release to filter out previous releases.

  • You do not need to enable the Insight Pack toggle.

  • Select and download the base “National Buildings” product.

_images/geoscape-hub-buildings-base.png

Annex C – Changes to accessing Buildings data via the Datasets API

Previously, the full Buildings dataset in each format was provided as a single ZIP package, however, from the March 2026 release, you will need to get the base Buildings product and include the additional Insight Packs to maintain a full Buildings dataset.

There is more detailed guidance on updates to the Datasets API available here and we recommend you review this carefully.

In summary:

  • The API response has been changed to include “child” products (Insight Packs) when a parent product is requested.

  • The Insight Packs are format PSV and datum NO DATUM. If you are using format and datum as query parameters, please ensure you are accommodating these values so that Insight packs are not filtered out of your results.

  • Version numbering will change with the March release. If you are using this in your logic, please note the changes described under Changes to Packaging – Versioning in the information sheet linked above.

  • From the March 2026 release, the response to List Datasets will return a variation of the following five datasets:

name

product

parentProduct

National Buildings

BUILDINGS

-

National Buildings - Height

BUILDING-HEIGHT

BUILDINGS

National Buildings - Roof

BUILDING-ROOF

BUILDINGS

National Buildings - Solar

BUILDING-SOLAR

BUILDINGS

National Address Pool

ADDRESS-POOL

BUILDINGS

The following is an example API response:

"datasets": [
{
"name": "National Buildings",
"description": "",
     "product": "BUILDINGS",
     "region": "ALL STATES",
     "format": "GDB",
     "release": "2026-03",
     "datum": "GDA2020",
     "publishDate": "2026-03-29",
     "version": 4000001,
     "classification": "STANDARD",
     "id": "85d8c46b47c74b30946a8274a9046090",
     "versionString": "004-000-001",
     "size": 7955369553,
     "status": "published",
     "licenced": false
   },
   {
     "name": "National Buildings - Height",
     "description": "",
     "product": "BUILDING-HEIGHT",
     "parentProduct": "BUILDINGS",
     "region": "ALL STATES",
     "format": "PSV",
     "release": "2026-03",
     "datum": "NO DATUM",
     "publishDate": "2026-03-29",
     "version": 4000001,
     "classification": "STANDARD",
     "id": "d51d8f6f120e9b8950e71646ab0d5117",
     "versionString": "004-000-001",
     "size": 300784136,
     "status": "published",
     "licenced": false
   },
   {
     "name": "National Buildings - Roof",
     "description": "",
     "product": "BUILDING-ROOF",
     "parentProduct": "BUILDINGS",
     "region": "ALL STATES",
     "format": "PSV",
     "release": "2026-03",
     "datum": "NO DATUM",
     "publishDate": "2026-03-29",
     "version": 4000001,
     "classification": "STANDARD",
     "id": "200624c5574e9b3c3deede2595253591",
     "versionString": "004-000-001",
     "size": 250064536,
     "status": "published",
     "licenced": false
   },
   {
     "name": "National Building Solar",
     "description": "",
     "product": "BUILDING-SOLAR",
     "parentProduct": "BUILDINGS",
     "region": "ALL STATES",
     "format": "PSV",
     "release": "2026-03",
     "datum": "NO DATUM",
     "publishDate": "2026-03-29",
     "version": 4000001,
     "classification": "STANDARD",
     "id": "72179abe53d5cc533aebdcac24c8b01a",
     "versionString": "004-000-001",
     "size": 195864700,
     "status": "published",
     "licenced": false
   },
   {
     "name": "National Address Pool",
     "description": "",
     "product": "ADDRESS-POOL",
     "parentProduct": "BUILDINGS",
     "region": "ALL STATES",
     "format": "PSV",
     "release": "2026-03",
     "datum": "NO DATUM",
     "publishDate": "2026-03-29",
     "version": 1000001,
     "classification": "STANDARD",
     "id": "f9a0cba37014b0ef4c874e2800024836",
     "versionString": "001-000-001",
     "size": 294829450,
     "status": "published",
     "licenced": false
   }
        ],

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.