U.S. national categorical mapping of building heights by block group from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data

This dataset is a categorical mapping of estimated mean building heights, by Census block group, in shapefile format for the conterminous United States. The data were derived from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, which collected first return (top of canopy and buildings) radar data at 30-m resolution in February, 2000 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. These data were processed here to estimate building heights nationally, and then aggregated to block group boundaries. The block groups were then categorized into six classes, ranging from Low to Very High, based on the mean and standard deviation breakpoints of the data. The data were evaluated in several ways, to include comparing them to a reference dataset of 85,000 buildings for the city of San Francisco for accuracy assessment and to provide contextual definitions for the categories.