In the course of designing a census register, the Federal Statistical Office (StBA) is investigating the extent to which new digital data can supplement the collection of census data. A census register must include building and dwelling characteristics that can be obtained in full by consulting a register. This requires the establishment of an official buildings and dwellings register for public administrative purposes. The census register should include all buildings suitable for living, so-called inhabitable dwellings, (including temporary structures like construction site containers, hunting cabins etc.) and the characteristics of the living units they contain. The buildings and dwellings register should in addition include buildings without living quarters. As well as regular updating routines for collecting new data, experience in other countries has shown that a census register requires due consideration of timeliness, completeness (e.g., the inclusion of temporary dwellings) and the comprehensiveness of supplementary quality assurance measures.
In the IF-Bund innovation project “Sat4GWR_IF-Bund – Remote sensing & AI for the census register”, algorithms are to be developed that are capable of detecting buildings and dwellings in aerial and satellite images and deriving selected characteristics. The remote sensing results should undergird the plausibility of the data in the official buildings and dwellings register. The anticipated added-value for the census register comes from its supplementing the processes planned to-date for establishing and maintaining the buildings and dwellings register and thereby decisively improving the quality of the building data both in that register and in the census register. The project is being carried out together with StBA and the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG). It began in October 2021 and will run to December 2024.