Building Footprints – Informal Settlements – Globally distributed, 2002-2017

This geospatial dataset provides manually mapped building footprints for poverty and informal settlement areas across multiple cities worldwide. The polygons were created by manual visual image interpretation (MVII) from very high-resolution satellite imagery and support urban morphology, deprivation, and remote sensing research.
Suggested Data Citation
Data: Building Footprints Data ©DLR [year of acquisition] All rights reserved. https://doi.org/10.15489/2wrrj8cpaj88
Coverage
		Yellow dots or areas indicate coverage range.
Geographic Boundaries
North:	90.00°
West:	180.00°
East:	180.00°
South:	-90.00°
Time Period
Start date:	2002-09-25
End date:	2017-09-21
More Information
Keywords:	DLR, EOC, building footprints, building morphology, manual visual image interpretation, poverty areas, complex urban areas, opendata
Contact:	nicolas.kraff@dlr.de | michael.wurm@dlr.de
Access / Use Restriction:	License
Data Use Guidelines	Creative Commons BY 4.0
Links
Mission / Project Information
DOI (of Dataset)	https://doi.org/10.15489/2wrrj8cpaj88 Digital Object Identifier
GIM International - Blog Article	https://www.gim-international.com/content/blog/classifying-urban-poor-areas-with-satellite-imagery Blog Article
Using Satellite Imagery to Map & Classify Urban Poor Areas	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMVLSzS73z4 Youtube video
Dharavi – a slum area in Mumbai	https://diercke.de/content/dharavi-slumviertel-in-mumbai-bearbeitetes-satellitenbild-978-3-14-100870-8-165-6-1 Map
Arrival Cities: Classifying Urban Poor Areas with Satellite Imagery	https://www.euspaceimaging.com/blog/2019/06/27/arrival-cities-classifying-urban-poor-areas-with-satellite-imagery/ Blog Article
Scientific Publication	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07945-2 Kraff, N.J., Wurm, M., Friesen, J., Debray, H., Taubenböck, H. (2026): A manually interpreted geo-dataset of building footprints in complex urban poverty areas across the globe. Sci Data (2026).
Scientific Publication	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2018.02.002 Taubenböck, H., Kraff, N. J., & Wurm, M. (2018). The morphology of the Arrival City - A global categorization based on literature surveys and remotely sensed data. Applied Geography, 92, 150-167
Scientific Publication	https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-013-9333-x Taubenböck, H., & Kraff, N. J. (2014). The physical face of slums: A structural comparison of slums in Mumbai, India, based on remotely sensed data. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 29(1), 15-38.
Scientific Publication	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102905 Kraff, N. J., Wurm, M., & Taubenböck, H. (2020). The dynamics of poor urban areas - analyzing morphologic transformations across the globe using Earth observation data. Cities, 107, 102905.
Scientific Publication	https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2020.3011543 Kraff, N. J., Wurm, M., & Taubenböck, H. (2020). Uncertainties of human perception in visual image interpretation in complex urban environments. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 13, 4229-4241
Downloading Data
HTTP download (Building Footprints)	https://download.geoservice.dlr.de/BUILDING_FOOTPRINTS/files/ HTTP download