Documentation for the Global Human Built-up And Settlement Extent (HBASE) Dataset From Landsat

Urbanization is an important driver of change across our home planet. With over half of the world’s population living in urban areas today, the mapping and monitoring of urbanization is critical to understanding these changes and their potential impacts. The availability of high resolution, free satellite imagery at multiple epochs from the Global Land Survey (GLS) Landsat archive provides great opportunities to map global man-made surfaces and extent in unprecedented detail. The Global Human Built-up And Settlement Extent (HBASE) Dataset From Landsat is derived from the GLS Landsat dataset for the target year 2010. The HBASE dataset consists of two components: 1) binary HBASE/non-HBASE classification; and 2) probability of HBASE. These layers are co-registered to the same spatial extend at a common 30m spatial resolution. The spatial extent covers the entire globe except Antarctica and some small islands. This dataset is one of the first global, 30m datasets of the extent of built-up area and settlements to be derived from the GLS data for 2010 and is a companion dataset to the Global Man-made Impervious Surface (GMIS) Dataset From Landsat.