Lesotho Building Footprints from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap building footprints across Lesotho include every feature tagged as a building, from residential homes to hospitals and schools. The data is created by volunteers and exported by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, with a last recorded update in May 2026. Completeness varies, with urban areas likely being better mapped than remote regions.

Use Cases

• Estimate population density based on building footprint distribution.
• Assess damage after a disaster by comparing building footprints to post-event imagery.
• Plan urban development and infrastructure using the locations of schools, hospitals, and places of worship.

Strengths

• Includes every OpenStreetMap feature tagged as a building across the entire region of Lesotho.
• Available in multiple geospatial file formats including GEOPACKAGE, SHP, and JSON.
• Data is licensed under the ODbL-1.0, allowing for sharing and adaptation with attribution.

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 for large-scale modeling.

Provenance

Source

OpenStreetMap

Collection Method

Volunteer mapping and collaborative editing, exported by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 17:47:22.642226

Geography

Lesotho