Costa Rica Building Footprints from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports provide building footprints across Costa Rica, including features tagged as residential homes, hospitals, schools, and places of worship. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) maintains this export, last updated on 2026-05-14. Data completeness varies by region, with urban areas typically well-mapped and remote areas potentially incomplete.

Use Cases

• Population estimation based on building density and type.
• Damage assessment following natural disasters based on building location and footprint data.
• Urban planning analysis based on the distribution of residential, commercial, and institutional buildings.

Strengths

• Includes every OpenStreetMap feature tagged as a building (`building=*`).
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats including GEOPACKAGE, SHP, and JSON.
• Maintained by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and updated as of 2026-05-14.

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 11:48:41.507442

Geography

Costa Rica