World Settlement Footprint (WSF) 2015/2019

World Settlement Footprint (WSF) 2015/2019

MH Subset Needed

Global human settlement extent at 10m resolution from Sentinel-1 radar and Landsat-8 optical imagery. Maharashtra subset maps built-up area with high accuracy, distinguishing settlements from bare soil — critical for urban planning in rapidly growing tier-2/3 cities.

Build a Maharashtra settlement growth tracker using 10m resolution World Settlement Footprint for urban planning.
Maharashtra subset not yet extracted. This is a global dataset that contains data covering Maharashtra. A regional subset can be extracted by filtering on geographic coordinates or administrative boundaries.
HomepageDownload

Quick Start

import rasterio
# Download from https://download.geoservice.dlr.de/WSF2019/
print('WSF: https://download.geoservice.dlr.de/WSF2019/')
print('10m resolution world settlement footprint')
Modality
raster-imagery
Size
~30 GB (global), ~500 MB (MH subset)
License
Format
GeoTIFF
Language
en
Update Frequency
periodic
Organization
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Category
transport-urban-infrastructure

Schema

FieldTypeDescription
settlementintBinary settlement mask (1=built-up, 0=non-built-up)
yearintReference year for settlement extent
resolution_mint10m spatial resolution

Build With This

Create an unauthorized settlement detector for Maharashtra municipalities using WSF change detection
Develop a rural-to-urban transition mapper tracking how Maharashtra villages evolve into towns
Build a building density estimator combining WSF settlement masks with population data for Maharashtra

AI Use Cases

Urban sprawl monitoring for MH citiesRural settlement identification and classificationRoad network connectivity analysisInfrastructure gap identificationPopulation estimation cross-validation
Last verified: 2026-03-07