EarthDefine Impervious Map
Nationwide at 60cm. All impervious surfaces. Updated annually.
EarthDefine's Impervious Map is the most detailed and up-to-date mapping of impervious surfaces across the contiguous United States. It captures built-up surfaces, buildings, roads, sidewalks, parking lots, airports and more, as a single impervious class at 60cm resolution, refreshed annually to track the changing built environment.
We developed a robust AI model that consistently classifies impervious cover in aerial imagery across the continental US. It classified over 120 terabytes of high-resolution colour-infrared imagery spanning more than 3.1 million square miles to create the Impervious Map.
The National Land Cover Database (NLCD) is the only other nationwide impervious dataset, but at 30-metre resolution on a five-year cycle it is not suited to precise, current analyses. Our map classifies impervious cover at 2500 times the spatial resolution and updates annually, capturing even driveways and sidewalks, and resolving surfaces partially obscured by tree cover or shadow so road connectivity and structures stay accurate.
The Impervious Map has an overall accuracy of 94.9% in census-defined urban areas. Accuracy was assessed using 48,000 random points (1,000 per state).
The Impervious Map AI model can map impervious cover from aerial imagery of previous years. For most of the US we have historical imagery back to ~2010, so multiple snapshots can be derived for change analysis.
High-resolution impervious-cover data is a key environmental indicator useful for many applications.
The Impervious Map is refreshed annually from the latest NAIP acquisition cycle, with seamless, ready-to-deliver coverage across the contiguous United States.
Download the datasheet, or grab a free sample for any of 15 US cities.
A 60cm raster of impervious surfaces, buildings, roads, sidewalks, parking lots and more, mapped as a single class.
94.9% accuracy in urban areas, and even higher accuracy in rural areas.
Stormwater runoff and water-quality modelling, urban heat-island analysis, TMDL studies, and dasymetric population mapping.
Annually, tied to new aerial imagery.
Rooftop polygons with heights, stories, and addresses for 191M+ properties.
Learn moreTalk to our team about Impervious Map coverage for your region, or download a free sample to evaluate the data yourself.
