Building Footprints Across South Korea from OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap exports contain every feature tagged as a building across South Korea, from residential homes to hospitals and schools. Completeness varies by region, with urban areas usually well-mapped and remote areas potentially incomplete. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) maintains this export on HDX, last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Estimate population density based on building footprint distribution.
• Assess potential damage from natural disasters using building location data.
• Analyze urban development patterns and land use from building types.
• Plan infrastructure and service delivery based on building locations.

Strengths

• Includes every OpenStreetMap feature tagged as a building (`building=*`).
• Covers a wide variety of building types, from residential 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 project.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-14 17:04:50.269576; freshness should be verified.

Geography

South Korea