Greenland Building Footprints from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports provide building footprints across Greenland, including residential, hospital, school, and place-of-worship features. The data is compiled by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and was last updated on 2026-05-15. Completeness varies by region, with urban areas likely being more thoroughly mapped than remote locations.

Use Cases

• Population estimation based on building density and type.
• Damage assessment for disaster response planning based on building locations.
• Urban planning and infrastructure analysis based on building distribution.

Strengths

• Includes all OpenStreetMap features tagged as a building (`building=*`).
• Covers a wide range of building types, from homes to hospitals and schools.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats (GEOPACKAGE, SHP, 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 2026-05-15 10:42:37.999108

Geography

Greenland