Afghanistan Building Footprints from OpenStreetMap

Building footprints across Afghanistan sourced from OpenStreetMap. The data includes every feature tagged as a building, from residential homes to hospitals, schools, and places of worship. It was last updated on 2026-05-12 and is provided by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Use Cases

• Estimate population distribution based on building density and type.
• Assess building damage after a disaster based on footprint changes.
• Plan urban infrastructure and services based on building locations.
• Analyze land use patterns from the distribution of building types.

Strengths

• Includes all OpenStreetMap features tagged as a building, covering a wide range of types.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats (GEOPACKAGE, SHP, JSON).
• Data is licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL-1.0).

Limitations

• Completeness varies by region; urban areas are usually well-mapped while remote areas may be incomplete.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer-contributed mapping via the OpenStreetMap platform.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-12 12:05:56.446572

Geography

Afghanistan