November 1, 2012 – this data is now public
The Countywide building outline dataset contains building outlines (over 3,000,000) for all buildings in Los Angeles County, including building height, building area, and the parcel number (also known as building footprints). This data was captured from stereo imagery as part of the LAR-IAC2 Project (2008 acquisition).
There are a number of sources, listed here:
- City of Palmdale – building outlines from the LAR-IAC (2006) imagery – derived from orthogonal imagery.
- City of Pasadena – building outlines from earlier imagery, updated with LAR-IAC2 (2008) imagery in 2008
- City of Glendale – building outlines from earlier imagery, updated with LAR-IAC2 (2008) imagery in 2008
- City of Los Angeles – building outlines from LAR-IAC2 (2008), stereo generated, for all buildings > 64 square feet
- The rest of the County - building outlines from LAR-IAC2 (2008), stereo generated, for all buildings > 400 square feet
Most of the buildings in this dataset were generated using stereo imagery. This means that the person capturing the buildings actually saw them in 3-D, and therefore was able to more accurately capture the location of the roof line, since this method eliminated the impacts of building lean (where the height of the building impacts its apparent location). Basically – this is the most accurate method for capturing building outlines. In many cases the location is more accurate than our aerial photography and parcel boundaries.
Samples
 |
 |
 |
 |
Data Access
This dataset is public as of November 1, 2012, and was created under license with Pictometry/Sanborn. County staff and LAR-IAC 2 Consortium members have full access to the data. I have attached a layer file below that will give you access to the data as long as you are connected to the County network.
- Building Outlines Layer File (ArcMap 10).lyr (for County staff only)
- Download data (zipped shapefile format) – 581 Mb (so be careful)
About LAR-IAC
The Los Angeles Region Imagery Acquisition Consortium (LAR-IAC) Program is a collaborative acquisition program for digital aerial imagery data which has included the participation of 10 County departments, 30 municipalities, and four other public agencies.
The consortium is a model for regional cooperation that improves the quality, access, and cost-effectiveness of high resolution digital aerial imagery. Knowledge transfer is increased through consortium program meetings, user groups, and various workshops that have been established in conjunction with the project. The imagery acquired will enable all participating jurisdictions to leverage this key geographic information asset for numerous decision support and business applications, thereby facilitating the effective and efficient delivery of services.
Purchasing LAR-IAC Data
Government agencies acquire LAR-IAC elevation data only through the County consortium. Private companies can acquire LAR-IAC data as part of a project they are working on with a LAR-IAC consortium member, or by contacting the original data vendor, Pictometry/Sanborn.
this is awesome Mark! Thanks!!
Hi there,
The footprints are an expensive dataset to create, and we have a collaborative group of governments that paid a lot of money to create them. If the data were freely available we would run into the free-rider issue, where no one would help pay for creating and maintaining them. That’s why they are under license, but will eventually go into the public domain. I will have to contact Santa Monica and ask them to pull them off that site.
I think it’s unfortunate that LA can’t share this dataset. Santa Monica GIS has the building footprints from 2008 available for free download (same source, I’m guessing). My project site is two blocks away from Santa Monica in West LA. So I’m out of luck.
thank you for the quick response
The data is currently licensed from Pictometry, so we cannot provide it to you at this time. But you can work with Pictometry to acquire it, and there are converters that convert .shp formats to .tab.
Hello, I was looking to get the building footprint file in a .shp file. I use MapInfo, which uses .tab. I can convert .shp but not layer files. Is there a way for this to happen?
Thanks
Unfortunately we can’t make that available – and for the entire County or City any graphic representation would be so busy as to make it unuseable.
Hi Mark,
Thank you for reply reply. By LA figure ground plan I meant the building footprints of the city of Los Angeles in its entirety where buildings only are indicated on the map such as the examples on the top of this page. I do realize the data is under license but is there any other way of getting this data, it not need be a dwg(autocad) file which would be most ideal, it can also be a pdf file …?
Thank you
Unfortunately not because it is a dataset that is under license. When you say the entire LA figure ground plan – what does that mean exactly? A map of the entire County?
Hi, I’m Architecture student from London and my studio unit has a task to draw the entire LA figure ground plan. I was wondering weather your building footprint of LA could be made available to us? It would be very much appreciated.
Thank you.
I’m glad that we could help, and that you find good value from GIS.
Hello Mark,
Thanks so much for forwarding the my comment to Nick. He did get back to me quickly with some helpful resources. To an amateur like me, GIS is amazingly helpful to integrate maps and info into historical projects.
Thanks again,
Bruce
Hello – Mark is right, we made the Z-NET application and had a setting to mask the areas in incorporated cities; and this is by design. The application is intended to be used to find your planning and zoning information unincorporated areas only (like Altadena). You should contact the City of Pasadena for the information in their city (they have the same data).
Building outlines is licensed data – see the information in the post above for rights to access. Good luck to you.
Hi Bruce,
I have forwarded your comment to Nick Franchino, the GIS Manager for the Department of Regional Planning, who manages the Z-NET site. He can help answer your question, although I know that since Z-NET is specifically for unincorporated areas the masking is placed there intentionally.
Anyone, (This may not be the forum for this)
NOT a GIS person. Using county GIS maps, Z-NET in particular, for history project on Altadena/ Pasadena. Pasadena area is masked out of course. Previously when I would move the transparency button on the Z-NET map, it would unmasked Pasadena. Button does not enable Pasadena anymore. When I hold down cursor, Pasadena does come into focus. I do like Z map for the addresses and building footprints. I have used ArcGis which is pretty cool site. Have used google, too.
Looking for a simple map with all of Altadena/Pasadena building footprints with addresses.
Thank you for any suggestions,
Bruce
bsutherland5@yahoo.com