Built-up areas of nineteenth-century Britain. An integrated methodology for extracting high-resolution urban footprints from historical maps

Abstract

Using both “off the shelf” remote sensing software, machine learning and computational algorithms, this article details a new methodology to extract building and urban footprints from historical maps. We applied these methods to create the first dataset of all built-up areas (BUA) in Britain in the early nineteenth century, covering all locations with buildings in England, Wales, and Scotland. The developed methods can now be applied to other maps and regions to provide useful quantitative data for analyzing long-term urban development. The code and data created are made available with this article.