Benefits:

• Enhancing a City map with building footprints providing additional context and color
• Planning: Knowing where and what type structures already exist on property can help in the planning process due to applied setbacks and minimum distances from houses and property lines. Another example, planning the location of a water line or a sewer line that needs to cross property on an easement. If the footprint exists, the location constraints become more immediately obvious.
• Public Works/Public Safety: Knowing where structures are located can show where access to the rear of property is constrained. This can be important for public safety, if there is a fire, can a fire truck get to the back of a property, or is there not room between two structures. From the public works perspective, if there is a facility running on an easement across a piece of property, knowing where vehicles can get in to be able to effect repairs is critical.
• Risk Analysis – test the actual building location and footprint against flood, wildfire, ocean surge and other hazards.
• Thematic Mapping – shade the actual building (rather than a point or a property boundary) with data that provides important context.
• Sometimes a graphic map is more helpful than an aerial, especially when the need is to target/highlight specific assets.
• Business list data – what businesses are in each building and what are the characteristics (category, size, contact points) of those businesses?
• Additional geographic layers – connect building footprint data with other agency layers and geographic levels to provide full horizontal and vertical analysis.
• Provides a means to estimate building floor area.
• Can be used in change detection.