Building First Floor Elevation

Insight Pack

Disclaimer

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Overview

First Floor Elevation (FFE) Insights provide information on how a building sits relative to the ground, helping to understand the height of the lowest habitable floor and how a property interacts with its surroundings.

Derived from analysis of street-level imagery and Geoscape data, the insight offers a building-level view of elevation alongside additional indicators such as the presence of a basement or garage, and whether the entrance to the building is raised.

Together, these attributes provide useful context on building structure and accessibility, supporting uses such as risk assessment, flood modelling, and property analysis. The insights are linked to both address and building records, enabling them to be easily integrated into broader geospatial workflows.

Example illustrating how First Floor Elevation insights are derived from imagery, identifying a raised entrance, basement indicators below entry level, and garage presence to support building-level analysis.

Detailed attribute definitions are provided in the technical description section.

Frequency and Currency

The Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack is updated on request only.

The currency of individual building first floor elevation records may vary across the dataset depending on when they were last captured or updated. Relevant dates are provided as attributes in the dataset.

Technical Description

Coverage

The Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack references buildings with first floor elevation information associated. A building in the Buildings product that has not been assessed for first floor elevation information will not be represented in the Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack.

Linkages

The building_pid attribute can be used to link the Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack building_first_floor_elevation table to the Buildings product buildings table. This is a 1:1 relationship - a building_first_floor_elevation record will link to only one buildings record.

Attribution

Date Information

The data model includes several dates describing the currency of the records within the product. The capture dates of the imagery utilised to derive the buildings information are provided in the date_first_captured (original capture of the feature) and the date_last_captured (recapture of the feature if available).

The first date at which a record was created within the dataset is captured in the date_created attribute, while the date_modified is populated if the record has been updated since the original capture.

Image Information

First Floor Elevation insights are derived from the analysis of imagery sources associated with each building record. Image metadata is provided to support transparency on how and when attributes have been derived.

The image_capture_date represents the date on which the source imagery used in the assessment was captured. This provides temporal context for the derived attributes and enables users to understand the currency of the observation relative to real-world conditions.

The image_capture_method describes the type of imagery used to derive the insight. First Floor Elevation is primarily derived from terrestrial (street-level) imagery, which enables detailed observation of building entry points, steps, and below-entry features required to infer elevation and related attributes.

Where multiple imagery sources are available, the most suitable imagery is selected based on coverage and visibility of relevant building features. In cases where imagery is unavailable, obscured, or of insufficient quality, derived attributes may be null.

First Floor Elevation

The first_floor_elevation attribute represents the elevation, in metres, of the building’s lowest habitable floor relative to ground level. The value is measured as the vertical distance from the ground surface at the building to the entry point of the building, where the habitable floor is accessed.

As the measurement is relative to the ground at the building location, the first floor elevation describes how the building sits above its immediate surroundings rather than an absolute height. This enables the attribute to be used in conjunction with ground elevation datasets to derive an absolute elevation for the habitable floor. In such cases, the first floor elevation value can be combined with the corresponding building ground elevation to determine the total elevation of the first habitable floor.

The first_floor_elevation_confidence attribute provides a quantified measure of confidence in the assigned elevation value, reflecting the availability and quality of source data used in its derivation.

Garage & Basement

The garage and basement attributes indicate the presence of a garage or basement associated with the primary residence building. These values are derived from imagery interpretation and are populated as Yes or No where observable.

A basement is defined, in the context of this dataset, as a building level that is located below the entry level and is identifiable through observable features in imagery. Identification is informed by indicators such as windows or openings positioned below the base level of entry doors.

Where a basement is identified or assessed, the reliability of this attribution is dependent on the visibility of below-entry features and the quality of available imagery; where sufficient evidence is not available, the attribute may be left null.

Raised Entrance

The raised_entrance attribute indicates whether an entrance to a building is elevated above ground level.

The attribute provides supporting context for interpreting first floor elevation by indicating whether a building’s entry point is raised relative to the surrounding ground surface. This can assist in identifying buildings where the lowest habitable floor is elevated above ground level.

This attribute is derived from the analysis of street-level imagery and reflects the vertical relationship between the ground level and the building entry point. Identification is informed by observable features such as the presence of steps, elevated thresholds, or other structural indicators that suggest the entrance is not at ground level. Where sufficient visual evidence is not available, or imagery is obscured or incomplete, the attribute may be recorded as null.

Data format

The Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack is provided in the Pipe-Separated Values (PSV) file format and is an aspatial file.

More Information

For more information on the Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack please contact Geoscape Australia Support.

Geoscape Australia Support

Geoscape Australia

Email: support@geoscape.com.au

Portal: support.geoscape.com.au

Web: www.geoscape.com.au

Data Model

Data Dictionary

This data dictionary is applicable for the building_first_floor_elevation insights pack.

Data dictionary for building_first_floor_elevation

Attribute	Data Type	Description	Primary Key	Mandatory	10 Character Alias
building_pid	character string (15)	Persistent identifier for the building.	Yes	Yes	BLD_PID
date_created	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The date of record creation for the building_first_floor_elevation record.	No	Yes	DT_CREATE
date_modified	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The most recent date that an attribute has been modified for the building_first_floor_elevation record.	No	No	DT_MOD
date_first_captured	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The date that the building first floor elevation information was captured for the building for the first time.	No	Yes	DT_FST_CPT
date_last_captured	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The most recent date that the building first floor elevation information was captured for the building.	No	Yes	DT_LST_CPT
capture_method	character string (30)	Type of source used to capture the first floor elevation of the building (e.g. Street Level Imagery).	No	Yes	CAPT_SRC
image_capture_date	date (yyyy-mm)	The year and month of the imagery used to assess the first floor elevation of the building.	No	No	IMG_CPT_DT
first_floor_elevation	number (4,2)	The height above ground level of the lowest habitable floor in metres as assessed from the street-facing side of the house.	No	No	FFE
first_floor_elevation_confidence	number (3)	The confidence in the assignment of the first floor elevation for the building as a percentage.	No	No	FFE_CONF
basement_flag	character string (3)	A ‘Yes’ value indicates that a basement has been identified for the building.	No	No	BASMNT_FLG
basement_confidence	character string (3)	The confidence in the assignment of the basement for the building as a percentage.	No	No	BASMNT_CON
garage_flag	character string (3)	A ‘Yes’ value indicates that a garage has been identified for the building.	No	No	GARAGE_FLG
raised_entrance	character string (3)	A ‘Yes’ value indicates that an entrance above the ground floor has been identified for the building.	No	No	RSD_ENT
state	character string (3)	The abbreviated name of the State or Territory that the building is primarily within.	No	Yes	STATE