Geoscape Surface Features describes what’s on the surface of the earth at a location.Â
Geoscape Surface Features include National Surface Cover, Urban Surface Cover, Urban Trees, Greenspace and Hydrology datasets. Integrate Geoscape as your single source for your built environment base map.
Elements of Geoscape Surface Features, particularly Greenspace and Hydrology, were created following customer feedback on our now retired Transport and Topography dataset. To find out more about the enhancements contact our support team.
Get in touch with us
Datasets available in Geoscape Surface Features
Surface Cover
Geoscape Surface Cover represents land cover categories across Australia. It’s a raster dataset with a digital pixel representation of the different types of ground cover of Australia. Urban Surface Cover includes pre-defined urban locations at two-metre resolution. National Surface Cover represents ground cover at thirty-metre resolution, nationally.
Download Surface Cover product description.
Trees
Geoscape Trees is a national dataset representing tree cover and associated heights in Australia’s urban areas. It’s a raster dataset with a digital pixel representation of tree cover and heights at a two-metre resolution. The Trees spatial dataset is created by combining surface classification and elevation data, making it consistent with Urban Surface Cover. Tree heights enable the identification of risk across any location within urban Australia. By combining trees data with Geoscape Buildings, assessment can be made of tree overhang and the risk posed by a tree to a building considering its distance from the building and its height.
Greenspace
Geoscape Greenspace is a digital representation of green areas in Australia. Knowing the exact location of green areas can provide insight into planning, valuations and analysis. The Greenspace dataset provides an optimised, aggregated national view of parks, reserves, recreational areas and open space. It uses a collection of points, lines and polygons to represent the location of greenspace areas. Combined with other datasets, it could provide powerful insights into the value of the property, urban planning decisions and analysis for liability of an area.
Hydrology
Geoscape Hydrology is a digital representation of waterways in Australia. Combined with other Geoscape datasets it can be useful in creating comprehensive risk models for insurance, urban planning and development site assessments. For example, combined with surface cover and buildings data, it can be used in flood modelling for risk assessments. Waterways include farm dams through to major rivers and oceans.
What can you do with Surface Features data?
Urban Planning
Use Geoscape datasets for insights into the surface features of large areas. Greener cities are better for human health and wellbeing, especially as increasing average temperatures result in more summer heatwaves.
The urban heat island effect is increasingly becoming a focus for urban planning and political decision making in cities. Using nationally consistent datasets can enhance assessment and modelling at scale. For example, the Trees dataset can be combined with ABS Mesh Blocks for insights into the average tree cover in cities. For data-driven insights, explore Geoscape Surface Features datasets.
Site Assessment
Tree location and height data can be used to assess sites for development potential. Tall and aging trees can impact the suitability for a new development
Modelling Runoff
Surface Cover represents surfaces such as roads, bare earth and grassed and built-up areas. Use it to assess the runoff potential for flood modelling and urban planning.Â
Insurance Risk
The proximity and height of trees to buildings can be assessed remotely for potential risk to structures. Power up by combining multiple Geoscape datasets for the full risk picture.Â
Get Geoscape Surface Features
Dataset format
Surface Features is available in the following format:
| Dataset | Format |
| National Surface Cover | GeoTIFF |
| Urban Surface Cover | GeoTIFF |
| Urban Trees | GeoTIFF |
| Greenspace | ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo TAB |
| Hydrology | ESRI Shapefile, MapInfo TAB |
Want to try it out? Check out our sample data visualisation and download our Chatswood sample area.
Get sample data. Â Â Â Â Â Â
