Belgium Building Footprints from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports provide building footprints across Belgium, including residential, hospital, school, and religious structures. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) aggregates this data, which was last updated on 2026-05-14. Completeness varies, with urban areas typically better mapped than remote regions.

Use Cases

• Population estimation based on building density and type.
• Damage assessment for disaster response using building footprint locations.
• Urban planning analysis based on the spatial distribution of structures.
• Infrastructure development planning based on the presence of key facilities like hospitals and schools.

Strengths

• Includes every feature tagged as a building (`building=*`) in OpenStreetMap.
• Covers a wide range of building types, from homes to hospitals and places of worship.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats, including GEOPACKAGE, SHP, and JSON.

Limitations

• Completeness varies by region; 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 2026-05-14 00:21:30.312614; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Belgium