World Settlement Footprint (WSF) 2015 v2 - Landsat-8/Sentinel-1 - Global

The World Settlement Footprint WSF 2015 version 2 (WSF2015 v2) is a 10m resolution binary mask outlining the extent of human settlements globally for the year 2015. Specifically, the WSF2015 v2 is a pilot product generated by combining multiple datasets, namely:

• The WSF2015 v1 derived at 10m spatial resolution by means of 2014-2015 multitemporal Landsat-8 and Sentinel-1 imagery (of which ~217K and ~107K scenes have been processed, respectively); https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00580-5

• The High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL) generated by the Connectivity Lab team at Facebook through the employment of 2016 DigitalGlobe VHR satellite imagery and publicly released at 30m spatial resolution for 214 countries; https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.05839.pdf

• The novel WSF2019 v1 derived at 10m spatial resolution by means of 2019 multitemporal Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery (of which ~ 1.2M and ~1.8M scenes have been processed, respectively); https://doi.org/10.1553/giscience2021_01_s33

The WSF2015 v1 demonstrated to be highly accurate, outperforming all similar existing global layers; however, the use of Landsat imagery prevented a proper detection of very small structures, mostly due to their reduced scale. Based on an extensive qualitative assessment, wherever available the HRSL layer shows instead a systematic underestimation of larger settlements, whereas it proves particularly effective in identifying smaller clusters of buildings down to single houses, thanks to the employment of 2016 VHR imagery. The WSF2015v v2 has been then generated by: i) merging the WSF2015 v1 and HRSL (after resampling to 10m resolution and disregarding the population density information attached); and ii) masking the outcome by means of the WSF2019 product, which exhibits even higher detail and accuracy, also thanks to the use of Sentinel-2 data and the proper employment of state-of-the-art ancillary datasets (which allowed, for instance, to effectively mask out all roads globally from motorways to residential).

Simple

Date (Creation)
2021-04-01T12:13:30
Edition

2
Citation identifier
https://geoservice.dlr.de/catalogue/srv/metadata/3030d15a-ae84-45f1-9ada-4964543339dc
Presentation form
Digital map
Other citation details

DOI: 10.15489/6n5h1ezef920
Purpose

The main objective of the World Settlement Footprint project is to depict the globals settlement extent.
Status
Completed
Point of contact
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Mattia Marconcini

mattia.marconcini@dlr.de

Author

DLR/EOC Land Surface Dynamics

WSF Team

wsf@dlr.de

Point of contact

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

EOC Geoservice

geoservice@dlr.de

Point of contact
Maintenance and update frequency
As needed

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

  • Land cover
Spatial scope
Keywords

  • global

  • urbanization

  • land

  • settlement extent

  • Landsat-8

  • Sentinel-1

  • opendata

  • inspireidentifiziert
Use limitation

Nutzungseinschränkungen: Das DLR ist nicht haftbar für Schäden, die sich aus der Nutzung ergeben. / Use Limitations: DLR not liable for damage resulting from use.

Access constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints
Es gelten keine Zugriffsbeschränkungen.
Use constraints
Other restrictions
Other constraints

Nutzungsbedingungen: Lizenz, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 / Terms of use: License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Other constraints

{"id": "cc-by/4.0",

"name": "Creative Commons Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)",

"url": " http://dcat-ap.de/def/licenses/cc-by/4.0",

"quelle": "Copyright DLR (2021)"}
Spatial representation type
Grid
Denominator
20000
Language
English
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Imagery base maps earth cover
N
S
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W
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Begin date
2019-01-01T00:00:00
End date
2019-12-31T23:59:00
Unique resource identifier
EPSG:4326
Number of dimensions
2
Dimension name
Column
Dimension size
4007549
Resolution
10  m
Dimension name
Row
Dimension size
1558491
Resolution
10  m
Cell geometry
Area
Transformation parameter availability
No
Distribution format
Name Version

GeoTIFF
OnLine resource
Protocol Linkage Name

OGC:WMS

 		https://geoservice.dlr.de/eoc/land/wms?

WSF_2015

OGC:WMS-http-get-capabilities

 		https://geoservice.dlr.de/eoc/land/wms?SERVICE=WMS%26REQUEST=GetCapabilities

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

 		https://geoservice.dlr.de/web/maps/eoc:wsf

EOC Geoservice Map Context

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

 		https://download.geoservice.dlr.de/WSF2015/files/

EOC Download Service

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

 		https://geoservice.dlr.de/eoc/ogc/stac/collections/WSF_2015

EOC STAC Collection

WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link

 		https://www.dlr.de/blogs/en/all-blog-posts/world-settlement-footprint-where-do-humans-live.aspx

World Settlement Footprint - DLR Blog
Hierarchy level
Dataset

Domain consistency

Measure identification
INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Title

Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation

See the referenced specification
Pass
Yes
Statement

The WSF2015 v2 is a pilot product generated by combining three different global layers, namely the WSF2015 v1, Facebook’s HRSL and WSF2019.

Description

World Settlement Footprint - WSF2015 Processing:



Processing:

After merging the WSF2015 v1 and HRSL (resampled at 10m resolution disregarding the population density information attached) by preserving pixels masked as settlement in any of the two layers, the resulting outcome has been masked by means of the WSF2019 product.



Quality Assurance:

The WSF2015v2 is obtained by combining datasets whose quality has been individually thoroughly assessed by means of dedicated validation exercises. In particular, for the WSF2015 v1 and WSF2019 >700,00 ground-truth samples have been collected by crowdsourcing photointerpretation in collaboration with Google. To this purpose a statistically robust and transparent protocol has been defined following recommended state-of-the-art practices.

Metadata

File identifier
3030d15a-ae84-45f1-9ada-4964543339dc XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Dataset
Hierarchy level name

Dataset
Date stamp
2023-03-14T12:04:01
Metadata standard name

ISO 19115-1:2014/19139
Metadata standard version

2003/Cor.1:2006
Metadata author
Organisation name Individual name Electronic mail address Role

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

geoservice@dlr.de

Point of contact
 
 

Overviews

overview
large_thumbnail
overview
thumbnail

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W
thumbnail




Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Land cover


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