Stratifying settlement by building type: assessing the accuracy of the GHS-BUILT-S dataset

Global high-resolution datasets on buildings and settlement have become increasingly available over the past decade but have lacked attributes on building type or use. The recent release of the GHS- BUILT-S dataset enables stratification of residential and non-residential built settlement globally for the first time. In this study we compare GHS-BUILT-S against national residential household datasets for Germany and Zambia, assessing its accuracy in different built landscapes. Our results show that a greater geographic extent is identified as residential in GHS-BUILT-S, including most mapped residential households in the census datasets. However, areas of non-residential buildings are likely underestimated in GHS-BUILT-S.