Building Footprints Across Canada from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team provide building footprints across Canada. The data includes every feature tagged as a building, from residential homes to hospitals, schools, and places of worship. Completeness varies by region, with urban areas usually well-mapped and remote areas potentially incomplete.

Use Cases

• Population estimation based on building density and type.
• Damage assessment for natural disasters using building footprint data.
• Urban planning and infrastructure development analysis.
• Cross-referencing local field knowledge with mapped building data.

Strengths

• Includes all OpenStreetMap features tagged as a building (`building=*`).
• Covers a wide range of building types, from residential to institutional.
• 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 project.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-15 10:56:54.831490; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Canada