Dec 15, 2025 07:00:00

The Global Building Atlas, a dataset covering 2.75 billion 3D building data from around the world, and a 3D map, are released

The Technical University of Munich has released the Global Building Atlas , a high-resolution 3D dataset covering all buildings in the world. The Global Building Atlas is expected to be useful for urban development and disaster prevention, and a 3D map using the dataset has also been released.

ESSD - GlobalBuildingAtlas: an open global and complete dataset of building polygons, heights and LoD1 3D models

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/17/6647/2025/

All the world's buildings available as 3D models for the first time - TUM
https://www.tum.de/en/news-and-events/all-news/press-releases/details/all-the-worlds-buildings-available-as-3d-models-for-the-first-time

The 3D map using Global Building Atlas is available at the following link.

Global Building Atlas LoD1
https://tubvsig-so2sat-vm1.srv.mwn.de/

When I accessed the 3D map, a warning message appeared saying, 'Due to concentrated access, data loading may fail.' I carefully read the terms of use , checked the agreement box, and clicked 'OK.'

A 3D map of Munich is displayed.

To check the 3D map of the area around Tokyo Station, enter 'tokyo station' in the search field at the top and click on Marunouchi Building.

A 3D map of the area around Tokyo Station is displayed.

You can zoom in and out of the map by using the button on the top left or by scrolling the wheel.

If you hover your mouse over the button in the red frame in the upper right corner, a menu will appear that allows you to change the background map.

When you set Google Maps as the background, it looks like this.

You can also set a Google Maps satellite image as the background.

97% of the 3D data provided by Global Building Atlas is coarse data called '

LOD1 .' The area enclosed in a red frame contains the Bank of Japan headquarters, which is famous for its circular shape, but it is not shaped like a circle.

The Global Building Atlas contains 2.75 billion buildings generated from satellite data since 2019, and is unique in that it includes buildings in areas that are often ignored in conventional data. When I checked Pyongyang, North Korea, for example, I found that it contained solid 3D data.

The Global Building Atlas dataset can be downloaded from the link below.

mediaTUM - Media and Publication Server
https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1782307

Additionally, detailed information about the dataset is available in the following GitHub repository:

GitHub - zhu-xlab/GlobalBuildingAtlas
https://github.com/zhu-xlab/GlobalBuildingAtlas