National Surface Cover¶

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¶

National Surface Cover is a raster dataset representing land cover categories across Australia. Urban Surface Cover has coverage in pre-defined urban locations across Australia at 2 metre resolution, while the National Surface Cover has complete national coverage at 30 metre resolution.

Geoscape Australia welcomes your feedback on the National Surface Cover Dataset. 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 3 March 2026.

This release is a full national data population for Version 1.8 of the National Surface Cover product, described by the National Surface Cover Product Description v1.8.

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¶

Versioning Update (Starting June 2026)¶

Beginning June 2026, all data products will transition to a standardised versioning 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 at a glance. The change is intended to improve transparency, reduce ambiguity, and support more efficient integration and usage of our data products.

Implementation of New Zip File Naming and Packaging Standards (Starting August 2026)¶

As part of ongoing improvements to product consistency and packaging standards, updates to zip file naming conventions and internal packaging structure will be implemented, starting in August 2026.

Zip File Naming

Two standard naming patterns will be used, depending on whether an extract contains spatial information:

Spatial Tables:

{PRODUCT-NAME}_{RELEASE YYYYMM}_{REGION}_{CRS}_{FORMAT}_{VERSION MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT}.zip

Aspatial (Insights) Tables:

{PRODUCT-NAME}_{RELEASE YYYYMM}_{REGION}_NODATUM_{FORMAT}_{VERSION MAJOR-MINOR-EXTRACT}.zip

Packaging Structure

All zip files will follow a simplified, flat directory layout:

No nested folders
The primary data file will be located at the top level of the zip.

Note: The product package will no longer include supporting content.txt files.

These changes ensure consistent packaging across all products, reduce complexity, and support improved automation and user experience.

Issues¶

New Issues¶

No new issues to note.

Resolved Issues¶

No resolved issues to note.

Known Issues¶

The progress and status of known, ongoing issues are summarised below. For specific and further details on each issue, please refer to the Release Report identified in the ‘Release identified’ column.

Ongoing product issues¶

Release Identified	Theme - Issue Name	Issue Brief Description	Progress/Resolution	Status
Dec-16	Building - Tree heights near buildings and other trees	Terrain elevation values used in the calculation of tree heights have been found in some cases to be affected by the surrounding tall features such as buildings and other trees.	No update at this time.	Open
Apr-17	Urban and National Surface Cover - Shadow and Cloud	An increase in the amount of shadow found in the Surface Cover layer, in some circumstances, has impacted on the shape and height of buildings as well as surface cover and trees.	Geoscape has worked with its partners to limit the capture and use of imagery that contains significant cloud and shadow for future releases. The future maintenance programs will be targeting areas affected by significant cloud and shadow.	Open
Nov-21	Trees over-capture	On Buildings, it has been observed that there are some situations where significant portions of some roofs have been captured as tree features. This is different from actual tree overhang and may be due to some combination of building proximity to trees, dark roof colour and/or shadow across roofs. Tree features in Surface Cover, where they intersect with buildings, are retained and represented over building features. This is because tree over-hang does exist in the real world, and also to ensure these tree pixels correspond to the Trees product. In Dense, Shadowed and Water Areas, the spectral signature of these areas can incorrectly result in features being extracted as trees during remote sensing. Height calculation can help to exclude the majority of these during production, but where heights are determined to be greater than 2 metres they may persist.	We are working with our partner to limit these occurrences, as well as improving our processes to identify and correct the situations where they are present.	Open
Nov-21	Updates based on Tree and Buildings classes	Since November 2021 Updates are limited to Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation classes according to the captured aerial imagery for the Trees and Buildings products. If a building or tree pixel is no longer covered by building or trees features according to the update, it will be converted to Built-up Areas or Unspecified Vegetation, respectively. Where pixels are covered by Buildings, Trees or Unspecified Vegetation according to the update, they will be retained or updated accordingly.	Methods and sources to update additional Surface Cover classes beyond Building, Tree and Unspecified Vegetation are currently being investigated.
Jun-22	Over classification of building class	The building classification in areas updated for the November 2021 and March 2022 releases have not received the improved aerial building representation.	Resolved for updated areas in the June 2022 and November 2021 and March 2022 will be resolved in a future release.

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¶