Urban Building Classification (UBC) - A Dataset for Individual Building Detection and Classification from Satellite Imagery

We present a dataset for building detection and classification from very high-resolution satellite imagery with the focus on object-level interpretation of individual buildings. It is meant to provide not only a flexible test platform for object detection algorithms but also a solid basis for the comparison of city morphologies and the investigation of urban planning. In most current open datasets, buildings are treated either as a class of landcover in the form of masks or as simple objects defined by separate contours (footprints). Our dataset, instead, represents individual buildings using in-depth object-level descriptions concerning geometry as well as functionality. Buildings are treated as objects with individual ID and boundary. Adjacent building blocks are also separated according to house numbers making a subsequent high-level classification of individual buildings possible. The buildings are classified into predefined roof types, such as flat, gable and hipped roof as well as functional purposes, i.e., residential, commercial, industrial, public, and their sub-classes, e.g., single-family house, office building and school. In the first version of the dataset we provide selected urban areas from two cities: Beijing in China and Munich in Germany. It, therefore, (1) allows to verify algorithms that are not only valid for specific regions but also work robustly in spite of the diversity of cities on different continents with various land forms and styles of architecture and at the same time (2) provides the possibility to quantitatively compare the statistics and morphology of different cities. It is planned to extend the dataset by a continuous integration of various urban areas worldwide.

Automated summary

The dataset focuses on individual building-level interpretation from high-resolution satellite imagery, providing in-depth descriptions of building geometry and functionality. It serves as a flexible test platform for algorithms and a solid foundation for comparing city morphologies and urban planning research.