USA Structures

FEMA GIS supports the emergency management community with world-class geospatial information, services, and technologies to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate against all hazards.


New Look on Data Page!

USA Structures data download site has been simplified for cost saving and user’s ease. 

Currently, occupancy type and address are available for all states territories. 

Of note: Feedback mechanism(s) coming soon.

Background

FEMA’s Response Geospatial Office, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the U.S. Geological Survey collaborated to build and maintain the nation’s first comprehensive inventory of all structures larger than 450 square feet for use in Flood Insurance Mitigation, Emergency Preparedness and Response.

The Problem

FEMA and our federal partners identified a need to create a building outline (the polygon representation of the structure) and an updated address database for the nation that could help ensure that critical infrastructure and residential buildings are accounted for in the disaster response and recovery decision-making processes.

To respond effectively, we need to understand population and the built environment—where people live, work and the critical infrastructure they rely on.

USA Structure Polygons on each building.

It's a Matter of Equity

Many residential structures have an address where the occupants receive mail, but the address is not associated with the structure’s physical location. This can happen when people use a Post Office box, or when the mailbox is located in a central location, which is often the case in mobile home parks, apartment buildings, and rural communities.

The lack of structure information can limit our ability to adequately characterize a disaster’s potential impacts since parts of the community are missed by the predictive models. Furthermore, the homes that lack a footprint with an associated address are occupied by the most vulnerable in the community, delaying aid to those who are most in need. How?  Since the location and address are not coupled, FEMA and our response partners can struggle to determine which damaged home is associated with the address presented by the survivor seeking assistance. 


mailboxes
Image Source: Yannik Mika via Unsplash.com

Creating the Inventory

To create the building outline inventory, FEMA, in conjunction with DHS Science and Technology, partnered with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to extract the outlines via commercially available satellite imagery. We then worked to determine the building’s usage or occupancy type (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial) which is noted as an attribute for each structure.

In the past, geographers have relied on satellite imagery as a high-coverage and low-cost data source to create building-location inventories; however, identifying individual buildings is labor-intensive and had been difficult to automate due to large variations of building appearances. Our processes included some new machine learning techniques and a collection method to obtain data from multiple sources, including from local governments who agreed to share it, and open data from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

Building Occupancy Types

In 2018, FEMA adopted a Building Occupancy Classification standard to ensure consistency across all FEMA programs. Creating a standard was important because an understanding of a building’s occupancy and use plays a critical role in enabling FEMA to undertake business processes such as analyzing risk, assessing damage, providing assistance, performing mitigation projects, coordinating search and rescue, and many others.

As of December 2021, the USA Structures dataset includes occupancy type (e.g., Residential, Commercial, Industrial) and primary occupancy type (e.g., Single Family Residential, Restaurant, Hospital) classifications for all structures. The team developed the data using a variety of sources including Census Housing Unit data, HIFLD, LightBox parcel data, and a modeled approach. 

Occupancy type and address is available for all states and territories.

Example Occupancy Types

Universal Unique Identifier (UUID)

In addition to the occupancy type and geometry, each polygon includes an Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) which is a unique ID for each structure across the entire dataset. This allows for connections to individual structures to unique data sources. The data schema is flexible enough to add new data fields and attributes.

Universal Unique Identification

Results

Currently, the building outline data is publicly available on the Esri Living Atlas as a Feature Layer for anyone to use in their own geographic products. 

  • The data is designed so additional attributes can be added as they become available (e.g., first floor elevation).
  • The database will create a shared baseline between stakeholders including DHS, local government, HAZUS, USGS, and more.
  • This effort supports and leverages the National Address Database (where available). FEMA is working with multiple partners to add additional addresses where appropriate. 



Impact

This new capability will assist FEMA in the execution of its mission by improving:

  • Pre-incident planning in determining buildings at risk
  • Disaster response and recovery operations by enhancing predictive models as well as our damage assessments
  • Interagency collaboration through a shared baseline of impacted structures.


Access the Data

Find the data on the Esri Living Atlas at USA Structures.


Contact Us!

Should you have any questions, please contact FEMA-RGO@fema.dhs.gov.

Damages applied to USA Structures




Join the Community


During disaster incidents we hold coordination calls with federal, state, and local geospatial personnel. View the Incident Call page to learn more and for information on how to participate.

Visit our Community page to learn more about how to access and share geospatial resources with FEMA.

For more information, please email: FEMA-RGO@fema.dhs.gov.

For media inquiries and official press releases from FEMA, contact: FEMA-News-Desk@fema.dhs.gov.