Urban Construction Monitor - see where your city is building

How it works

One map, three layers, every month.

Amsterdam, January 2018 to today. Drag the slider or pick a layer to see how the picture builds up.

Layer 1: 357 register-verified construction sites

Layer 2: all 2,148 sites detected from satellite

Layer 3: 664 early signals from the last 12 months

Register-verified

Sites confirmed against the national building register, with parcel-level outlines, estimated start and status. The layer you can build a model on.

Detected

Every site the satellites picked up across the whole city, scored every month. Measured coverage, not a sample or a survey.

Early signals

Satellite-measured activity from the last twelve months, shown separately and flagged as lower confidence. The newest part of the picture.

Why it exists

The data you would want does not exist. So we measure it.

Construction drives demand for materials, logistics, housing and risk. Yet nobody has a current map of it.

01

Registers trail the ground

The Netherlands has some of the best building data in the world, and even here the public register trails what happens on the ground. In many places there is no usable register at all.

02

Bought imagery is priced for single sites

Commercial high-resolution imagery finds construction well, but the data and the compute on top are priced per site. At city scale, month after month, back to 2018, nobody pays those bills.

03

Smarter methods, open data

We make the Copernicus Sentinel archive, monthly since 2018 and planet-wide, deliver what bought imagery would. Optical and radar satellite data, register labels, deep learning and human audits. What you pay for is the monitoring, not the pixels.

What you get

From a city heat map to a single parcel.

An interactive monitor with a monthly timeline from January 2018 and a 3D view, a verified site list with parcel-level polygons, estimated start, size and status, and the early-signal layer for the newest activity. GeoJSON exports for your own GIS and models on licensed plans. Trials are for viewing, not exporting.

Parcel-level

Outlines snapped to cadastral parcels where the cadastre supports it, so they match the land units you already work in.

Whole city

Every part of the city scored every month. Not a central-business-district sample, not spotty portal coverage.

Back to 2018

A new city arrives with about eight years of monthly history on day one.

Audited

The verified tier is independently audited by humans on cities the models had never seen. Audit sheets are shared during a trial.

The app, Amsterdam: 2D map, then 3D

Screen recording of app.urbanmonitor.eu. Basemap: OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.

Coverage

Four cities live. Others can follow.

Live means you can sign in and use it today. A national register, where one exists, powers automated verification. Where none exists, a human-verified tier is built at onboarding.

Pilot cities, live Monthly, January 2018 to now, in the app today

AmsterdamNetherlands

UtrechtNetherlands

Den HaagNetherlands

EindhovenNetherlands

In progress Cities we are already working on

LondonUnited Kingdom

ParisFrance

New YorkUnited States

Each live city covers the official city boundary plus a buffer. More cities and larger areas come with new subscriptions: the method and the tools scale to most countries and cities. Tell us which one matters to you when you request access.

Who it is for

Built for people who act on where building happens.

Developers

See every live site around a plot you are weighing, and what started in the last year that no portal shows yet.

Investors and funds

Track pipeline and competing supply across a whole city, month by month, back to 2018, with the same lens in every market.

Lenders and insurers

An independent, satellite-based read on whether and when works actually began, flagged as estimates, to sit beside your own checks.

Data and proptech teams

Parcel-level polygons with dates and status, delivered as GeoJSON on licensed plans, ready for your GIS and models.

Sentinel-2 image of the Muhos area, Finland, 20 July 2025, mostly forest — **Use case: the data-centre buildout.** Muhos, Finland, the reported Google data-centre site. About 330 ha cleared in one year, seen on Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 m. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2025-2026.

Sentinel-2 image of the same area on 30 July 2026, about 330 hectares cleared — **Use case: the data-centre buildout.** Muhos, Finland, the reported Google data-centre site. About 330 ha cleared in one year, seen on Sentinel-2 imagery at 10 m. Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2025-2026.

Use case

We see the buildout as ground breaks.

Hyperscale sites are the easiest class to detect from orbit: huge footprints, greenfield land, fast clearing. The same lens monitors any list of announced projects, in any country. Four reported data-centre sites, before and after, are on the Explore page.

Data centres from orbit

Building by building

Amsterdam's IJ waterfront in 3D.

Grey buildings rise in order of their construction year in the Dutch building register. Then every building with a construction year from 2018 to 2026 drops in, in orange, one year at a time. In this 3.1 by 3.9 km frame that is 1,191 of the 17,985 buildings standing today.

New means BAG original construction year 2018 to 2026 and status in use, Kadaster extract of 8 September 2026. Heights from AHN5 lidar, exaggerated 2x. This piece is register and lidar data, not satellite output, and shows today's city sorted by age. Counts are for this frame, not for Amsterdam.

More 3D and timelines

Amsterdam Noord and the IJ, by construction year

BAG (c) Kadaster, extract 8 Sep 2026. Heights AHN5. Basemap: OpenFreeMap, OpenMapTiles, (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.

Play

Do you know where your city is building?

You know your own projects. Here is a quick test of how well you know everyone else's. Drop five pins on Amsterdam, five on Utrecht, answer one before-and-after, then compare with our map. About 60 seconds, no sign-up.

Play Spot the Site

Questions

The usual questions, answered short.

Something missing? Write to hello@geospatialdataconsulting.com.

What exactly is measured?

Construction sites across a whole city, scored every month from January 2018 to now. For every site: a parcel-level polygon, an estimated start date, end or ongoing status, estimated area, and a verification status against the national building register. It is monitoring, not forecasting: the product reports measured activity.

Where does the data come from?

Open optical and radar satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel programme, labels from national building registers, deep learning, and human audits against high-resolution aerial imagery. No imagery is bought, which is what makes whole-city monthly monitoring affordable. See the methodology.

How accurate is it?

The verified tier is independently audited by humans on cities the models had never seen, against multi-year high-resolution aerial imagery. Audit sheets are shared during a trial. Start dates are satellite-estimated and carry a typical error of months, so they are robust for market analysis and not for legal or contractual use. Figures are measured on audited samples and are not warranties.

Which cities are available?

Live today: Amsterdam, Utrecht, Den Haag and Eindhoven. The engine has also been run on cities such as London, Paris and New York, and other cities can be added on request. New cities are chosen by client nomination.

What does a city without a building register get?

Verification is a workflow we bring, not a government dataset we depend on. Where no register exists, onboarding includes an expert human review round against high-resolution imagery plus city-specific training labels, so a human-verified tier ships there too.

How do I get access?

Request access with your company email and the city that matters to you. We reply personally and set up a trial login for the app, which signs you in with a one-time email code. No credit card, no self-serve signup.

Can I get the data into my own tools?

Yes, on licensed plans: GeoJSON exports of polygons, dates and status for your GIS and models. Exports carry the source line and the disclaimer and are for your organisation's internal use. Trials are for viewing, not exporting.

Want this map for your city, every month?

Tell us which city matters to you. We reply personally, usually within two working days, with a trial login for the app.

Request access Sign in

See where your city is building.