Building Facade Material

Disclaimer

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Overview

The Facade Material Insight Pack provides information on the predominant material forming the external facade of a building. This insight supports analysis across a range of use cases, including urban planning, risk assessment, asset management, and building classification.

The dataset is delivered as an attribution to buildings, aligned with the Geoscape National Buildings dataset.

Frequency and Currency

The Building First Floor Elevation Insight Pack is updated on request only.

The currency of individual building first floor elevation records may vary across the dataset depending on when they were last captured or updated. Relevant dates are provided as attributes in the dataset.

Technical Description

Coverage

The Building Facade Material Insight Pack references buildings with facade material information associated. A building in the Buildings product that has not been assessed for facade material information will not be represented in the Building Facade Material Insight Pack.

Linkages

The building_pid attribute can be used to link the Building Facade Material Insight Pack table to the Buildings product buildings table. This is a 1:1 relationship - a facade material record will link to only one buildings record.

Attribution

Date Information

The data model includes several dates describing the currency of the records within the product. The capture dates of the imagery utilised to derive the buildings information are provided in the date_first_captured (original capture of the feature) and the date_last_captured (recapture of the feature if available).

The first date at which a record was created within the dataset is captured in the date_created attribute, while the date_modified is populated if the record has been updated since the original capture.

Image Information

The building facade material insights are derived from the analysis of imagery sources associated with each building record. Image metadata is provided to support transparency on how and when attributes have been derived.

The image_capture_date represents the date on which the source imagery used in the assessment was captured. This provides temporal context for the derived attributes and enables users to understand the currency of the observation relative to real-world conditions.

The image_capture_method describes the type of imagery used to derive the insight. The building’s facade material is primarily derived from terrestrial (street-level) imagery, which enables detailed observation of building entry points, steps, and below-entry features required to infer elevation and related attributes.

Where multiple imagery sources are available, the most suitable imagery is selected based on coverage and visibility of relevant building features. In cases where imagery is unavailable, obscured, or of insufficient quality, derived attributes may be null.

Facade Material

The facade_material attribute identifies the predominant material forming the external facade of a building, based on visual interpretation of available imagery. It represents the primary material observed across the building’s exterior walls, with a single value assigned per building to reflect the most visually dominant material rather than all materials present. Typical values include common construction materials such as brick, concrete, glass, steel or metal, timber, stone, rendered or plaster finishes, composite or cladding materials, and an ‘other’ category where classification is less specific; however, the exact domain may evolve over time as classification capability improves.

The attribution is applied at a building-level generalisation, meaning smaller facade elements or mixed materials are not individually captured. Where multiple materials are visible, the material covering the largest visible portion of the facade is selected. This approach ensures consistent, interpretable outputs across a national dataset while still capturing meaningful variation in building construction.

As the attribute is derived from imagery, it is subject to limitations such as occlusion, vegetation cover, shadows, viewing angle and image quality. The attribute describes external wall materials only and does not include roof material or internal construction. Where the facade is not visible or the material cannot be confidently determined, the attribute is assigned a NULL value to maintain consistency in cases of uncertain attribution.

Data format

The Building Facade Material Insight Pack is provided in the Pipe-Separated Values (PSV) file format and is an aspatial file.

More Information

For more information on this Buildings Insight Pack please contact Geoscape Australia Support.

Geoscape Australia Support

Geoscape Australia

Email: support@geoscape.com.au

Portal: support.geoscape.com.au

Web: www.geoscape.com.au

Data Model

Data Dictionary

This data dictionary is applicable for the building_first_floor_elevation insights pack.

Data dictionary for building_first_floor_elevation

Attribute	Data Type	Description	Primary Key	Mandatory	10 Character Alias
building_pid	character string (15)	Persistent identifier for the building.	Yes	Yes	BLD_PID
date_created	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The date of record creation for the building_first_floor_elevation record.	No	Yes	DT_CREATE
date_modified	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The most recent date that an attribute has been modified for the building_first_floor_elevation record.	No	No	DT_MOD
date_first_captured	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The date that the building first floor elevation information was captured for the building for the first time.	No	Yes	DT_FST_CPT
date_last_captured	date (yyyy-mm-dd)	The most recent date that the building first floor elevation information was captured for the building.	No	Yes	DT_LST_CPT
capture_method	character string (30)	Type of source used to capture the first floor elevation of the building (e.g. Street Level Imagery).	No	Yes	CAPT_SRC
image_capture_date	date (yyyy-mm)	The year and month of the imagery used to assess the first floor elevation of the building.	No	No	IMG_CPT_DT
façade_material	character string (50)	The facade_material attribute identifies the predominant material forming the external facade of a building.	No	No	FAÇADE_MAT
state	character string (3)	The abbreviated name of the State or Territory that the building is primarily within.	No	Yes	STATE

References

[Aerometrex, 2023]

Aerometrex. Aerial imagery. Raster Dataset, 2023. URL: https://aerometrex.com.au/.