U.S. national categorical mapping of building heights by block group from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data
Dataset Identification:
Resource Abstract:
This dataset is a categorical mapping of estimated mean building heights, by Census block group, in shapefile format for the
conterminous United States. The data were derived from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which collected first return
(top of canopy and buildings) radar data at 30-m resolution in February, 2000 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. These data
were processed here to estimate building heights nationally, and then aggregated to block group boundaries. The block groups
were then categorized into six classes, ranging from Low to Very High , based on the mean and standard deviation breakpoints
of the data. The data were evaluated in several ways, to include comparing them to a reference dataset of 85,000 buildings
for the city of San Francisco for accuracy assessment and to provide contextual definitions for the categories.
Citation
Title U.S. national categorical mapping of building heights by block group from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data
other Citation Details
Cinergi keyword enhanced.File generated at Wed Dec 05 04:27:16 UTC 2018
purpose:
The purpose of this dataset is to provide a reasonably-accurate, publicly-available mapping of relative building heights at
the national scale. Building heights have a number of potential uses in research topics: for example, as a measure of shade
to nearby streams, as an indicator of urban intensity not captured by traditional horizontal imperviousness, as mapping of
potential viewshed conflict areas, and more. It is believed a national publicly-available digital mapping of the "verticalness"
of the U.S. landscape may aid in such research efforts.