Buildings and settlements are the structures and locations in which populations live and carry out economic activity. As such this theme’s main use is to locate population and its distribution. Settlements may be used at different levels of detail - from local to global. Buildings and settlements are required for a set of fundamental use cases, including:
It is strongly relevant for SDGs 9,11, 12 and relevant for SDGs 1, 3,4,6,7 and 13.
Buildings are independent, free‐standing structures generally covered by a roof and enclosed within external walls. However, in some cases, a building may consist of a roof with supports, in some other cases, a roofless structure consisting of a space enclosed by walls may be considered a building. Buildings also include separately usable underground constructions which people can enter.
The Buildings and Settlements theme spans various scales or resolutions. The Building is at the more granular level, which at a smaller scale might be referred to as a ‘built up area’. A settlement is formed by a collection of built-up areas, including dwellings, other buildings, and associated land.
Minimum attributes for both are the location geometry and an identifier of some type. Additional useful attributes of buildings include links to its address and its functional classification. For settlements additional attributes might include an indication of population size.