XYZ Maps and Microsoft Building Footprints¶
During the summer of 2018 Microsoft released a set of building footprints based on analysis of aerial imagery. In all, the Microsoft dataset consisted of 125,192,184 building footprint polygon geometries in all 50 US States in GeoJSON format.
This dataset formed the basis for an article, published on October 12th 2018, in the NY Times entitled “A Map of Every Building in America.”
In early March 2019, Microsoft released a set of building footprints, using the same techniques, for all of Canada.
Since XYZ Maps is a location data management service, we decided to see what we could do with these large datasets.
We started with the source data from Microsoft and processed it so that users of XYZ Maps could quickly create maps that
- don’t require coding or GIS experience
- don’t require large file uploads or downloads
- allow filtering of the source data to focus in on a particular part of the US and/or Canada
- supports maximum zoom in
- allows exploration of the source data.
XYZ worked with geocode.earth to enhance the original Microsoft Building Footprint dataset to add admin attributes to each polygon. As a result, the enhanced dataset can be filtered by admin attribute to focus on the data of interest.
The data is available in two formats – GeoJSON and GeoJSONL. (Learn more about GeoJSONL over at interline.io.) It maintains the ODbL license granted by Microsoft.
Both formats can be efficiently uploaded to XYZ Maps Spaces using the XYZ Maps CLI using the -s streaming option.
You can use XYZ Maps tags to preview and extract various sub-regional admin levels, including neighborhood,locality, and county, along with street and postalcode. Some demonstration maps are provided below.
| region | geojsonl | geojson | size | XYZ Maps map (tag,filter) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | geojsonl | geojson | 2.29 GB | |
| Alaska | geojsonl | geojson | 0.11 GB | |
| Arizona | geojsonl | geojson | 2.59 GB | |
| Arkansas | geojsonl | geojson | 1.34 GB | |
| California | geojsonl | geojson | 11.33 GB | |
| Colorado | geojsonl | geojson | 2.06 GB | |
| Connecticut | geojsonl | geojson | 1.22 GB | |
| Delaware | geojsonl | geojson | 0.33 GB | |
| District of Columbia | geojsonl | geojson | 0.06 GB | |
| Florida | geojsonl | geojson | 6.89 GB | |
| Georgia | geojsonl | geojson | 3.60 GB | |
| Hawaii | geojsonl | geojson | 0.25 GB | |
| Idaho | geojsonl | geojson | 0.83 GB | |
| Illinois | geojsonl | geojson | 5.09 GB | |
| Indiana | geojsonl | geojson | 3.41 GB | |
| Iowa | geojsonl | geojson | 1.86 GB | |
| Kansas | geojsonl | geojson | 1.67 GB | |
| Kentucky | geojsonl | geojson | 2.13 GB | |
| Louisiana | geojsonl | geojson | 1.95 GB | |
| Maine | geojsonl | geojson | 0.77 GB | |
| Maryland | geojsonl | geojson | 1.60 GB | |
| Massachusetts | geojsonl | geojson | 2.16 GB | |
| Michigan | geojsonl | geojson | 4.88 GB | |
| Minnesota | geojsonl | geojson | 2.91 GB | |
| Mississippi | geojsonl | geojson | 1.33 GB | |
| Missouri | geojsonl | geojson | 3.14 GB | |
| Montana | geojsonl | geojson | 0.74 GB | |
| Nebraska | geojsonl | geojson | 1.14 GB | |
| Nevada | geojsonl | geojson | 0.95 GB | |
| New Hampshire | geojsonl | geojson | 0.57 GB | |
| New Jersey | geojsonl | geojson | 2.62 GB | |
| New Mexico | geojsonl | geojson | 0.99 GB | |
| New York | geojsonl | geojson | 5.12 GB | |
| North Carolina | geojsonl | geojson | 4.43 GB | |
| North Dakota | geojsonl | geojson | 0.55 GB | |
| Ohio | geojsonl | geojson | 5.72 GB | |
| Oklahoma | geojsonl | geojson | 1.91 GB | |
| Oregon | geojsonl | geojson | 1.78 GB | |
| Pennsylvania | geojsonl | geojson | 4.94 GB | |
| RhodeIsland | geojsonl | geojson | 0.39 GB | |
| South Carolina | geojsonl | geojson | 2.06 GB | |
| South Dakota | geojsonl | geojson | 0.66 GB | |
| Tennessee | geojsonl | geojson | 2.88 GB | |
| Texas | geojsonl | geojson | 9.72 GB | |
| Utah | geojsonl | geojson | 1.01 GB | |
| Vermont | geojsonl | geojson | 0.36 GB | |
| Virginia | geojsonl | geojson | 2.98 GB | |
| Washington | geojsonl | geojson | 2.95 GB | |
| West Virginia | geojsonl | geojson | 0.98 GB | |
| Wisconsin | geojsonl | geojson | 3.20 GB | |
| Wyoming | geojsonl | geojson | 0.36 GB | |
| 🇨🇦 | ||||
| Alberta | geojsonl | geojson | 1.81 GB | Edmonton (streets) |
| British Columbia | geojsonl | geojson | 1.49 GB | Victoria (neighbourhoods) |
| Manitoba | geojsonl | geojson | 0.71 GB | Winnipeg (neighbourhoods) |
| New Brunswick | geojsonl | geojson | 0.32 GB | St. John |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | geojsonl | geojson | 0.22 GB | Goose Bay |
| Northwest Territories | geojsonl | geojson | 0.02 GB | Yellowknife |
| Nova Scotia | geojsonl | geojson | 0.35 GB | Halifax (downtown streets) |
| Nunavut | geojsonl | geojson | 0.01 GB | Iqaluit (streets) |
| Ontario | geojsonl | geojson | 3.71 GB | Toronto (Yonge St) |
| Prince Edward Island | geojsonl | geojson | 0.07 GB | Charlottetown (streets) |
| Quebec | geojsonl | geojson | 2.23 GB | Quebec City (neighbourhoods) |
| Saskatchewan | geojsonl | geojson | 0.97 GB | Regina (streets) |
| Yukon Territory | geojsonl | geojson | 0.02 GB | Whitehorse (streets) |
(Hint: press R to toggle roads.)