New data added: Germany

Deutschland is kind of a big deal when it comes to big data, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to work with. Until now.

39 million buildings, and counting.

State of the nation

In Germany, the accumulation and monitoring of geodata is the duty of the sixteen federal states. The states maintain all the sources and have an agreement among each other about available formats and data interoperability. Sounds great, right?

Sadly, this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a piece of cake to import all this geodata at once. As usual, the devil is in the detail.

Looking at the data, we could see straight away that each federal state feels distinctly unique and individual — and that’s not a good thing. It’s a similar story in some big corporations: One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing.

The reality is that only five federal states offer their data in an appropriate license, and the confusion and bickering continues even to different interpretations about what constitutes a building, and a building part.

Don’t panic.

Without divulging too many trade secrets, we stayed up all night, for quite a few nights in a row, and as a result you now have 6 million new buildings ready for use.

This data also comes with fully-integrated building heights as well. Our coverage for the available states (Berlin, Hamburg, Saxonia, Thuringia, NorthRhine-Westphalia and Brandenburg) now stands at 100%. Prost!

And naturally, as soon as the remaining states release more data, we’ll pour out the black coffee and settle in for another long night so you can enjoy the benefits.

Deutschland in numbers

No. of buildings: 33.4 M > 39.3 M
Type attribute: 14.7% > 48.7%
Height attribute: 6.2% > 44.5%
Roof details: 4.0% -> 41.0%