Data Update Spain 🇪🇸: New National LiDAR Building Data

alex03051
5 days ago
2 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

We’re excited to announce that Cityweft now supports a new nationwide dataset of high-precision building heights across Spain.

Using authoritative LiDAR data from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN), we generate accurate and consistent 3D building geometry for cities, towns, and rural areas across the entire country — bringing a new level of realism and reliability to Spanish context models.

The updated dataset is live today across the Cityweft platform, plugins, and API, with no additional setup required.

Madrid, Spain Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building heights — ***Madrid, Spain*** *Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building heights*

What’s new

🇪🇸 Nationwide building height coverage

Cityweft now provides Spain-wide building height coverage, generated from high-resolution LiDAR surveys published by IGN and collected up to 2021.This ensures consistent and reliable building geometry across urban centres, coastal regions, and inland municipalities alike — from Madrid and Barcelona to smaller towns and rural areas.

📡 High-precision LiDAR-derived geometry

The LiDAR data delivers survey-grade elevation accuracy, capturing real building heights and roof forms rather than inferred or averaged values.This significantly improves urban massing, skyline accuracy, and terrain–building relationships.

🔌 Seamless integration across workflows

Whether you’re exporting via the Cityweft web platform, working in Rhino and other plugins, or accessing data through the Cityweft API, the new Spain building height layer is fully supported and ready to use.

Barcelona, Spain Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building heights — **Barcelona, Spain** Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building heights

Examples of improvement

With the new LiDAR-based dataset baked directly into Cityweft exports, you’ll notice:

More faithful urban skylines
Building heights that reflect real-world survey data
Improved performance for site modelling, context studies, and simulations
Cleaner, more consistent geometry compared to OSM-only height inference

Marin, Spain Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building coverage and heights — **Marin, Spain** Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building coverage and heights

Las Palmas, Gran Canaria Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building coverage and heights — **Las Palmas, Gran Canaria** Left: OSM-only data with missing building heights Right: New LiDAR-based dataset with full building coverage and heights

Built for Spanish workflows

This update is especially valuable for projects working within Spanish planning, environmental, and regulatory contexts, where accuracy, consistency, and authoritative data sources are essential.

Whether you’re working on:

early-stage architectural concepts
urban development proposals
environmental and solar impact studies
large-scale masterplanning

Cityweft now provides a reliable nationwide baseline for Spain.