Data sources

BuildingsScore is only as good as the data under it. Here's exactly what powers each part — and where the limits are.

What powers what

Source	Powers	Coverage
OpenStreetMap (via Overpass)	Roads & highways, railways, transit stops (metro/tram/bus/train), parks, forests, water, industry, farmland, airports	🌍 Global
Google Maps Platform	The base map, Places (shops, food, services, ratings & photos), and place details	🌍 Global
Google Air Quality API	The live Air quality dimension (Universal AQI)	🌍 Most regions
OSRM / Valhalla	Street-following walking routes to nearby places	🌍 Global
Nominatim (OpenStreetMap)	Turning a clicked point into a street address	🌍 Global
EU END / European Environment Agency	Real modeled noise (Lden dB) contours — aircraft, road, rail and industry — feeding the Quiet and Environment scores	🇪🇺 24 EU countries
Open-Meteo	Ground elevation — the basis of the flood-risk proxy	🌍 Global

Why two map databases?

Google Places has the best coverage of businesses — shops, restaurants, ratings and photos. OpenStreetMap has the best coverage of the physical world — the exact shape of a park, where a railway runs, the full extent of a transit network. BuildingsScore uses each for what it does best: distances to parks, water and rail come from OpenStreetMap's real geometry (nearest edge, not a far-off centre), while shops and their ratings come from Google.

Where the estimates are — and why

Three things genuinely can't be read off a map of places. We're upfront about each:

• Noise (aircraft, road, rail, industry). In 24 European countries all four use the EU's official modeled decibel contours (real bands, drawn on the map). Outside that coverage they fall back to real map features nearby — a busy road, a railway, an industrial zone or an airport. Those proximity signals are meaningful for road, rail and industry, but the airport-distance proxy for flight is crude (it ignores flight paths and aircraft type), so treat that one as a rough hint, not a measurement.
• Flood risk. Estimated from low elevation plus closeness to water. This is a proxy, not a hydrological flood-zone model; a real model (e.g. FEMA or global flood rasters) is a planned upgrade.
• Crime. Not in the score yet. We're currently sourcing a reliable, point-level crime dataset and plan to add it to the scoring in future. For now, "Safety" reflects emergency-service proximity.

Freshness

Air quality is fetched live for each location. Map features and places are cached for up to ~60 days and then refreshed — surroundings change slowly, and caching keeps the tool fast and free to run. OpenStreetMap itself updates continuously as its community edits it.

Attribution & licensing

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). Map base, places and air quality © Google. Noise contours (aircraft, road, rail and industry) © European Environment Agency / EU Member States under the Environmental Noise Directive. Elevation by Open-Meteo. We're grateful to these projects — BuildingsScore wouldn't exist without open data.

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