Extended Data Fig. 8: Quantitative comparison of global rooftop area estimates with reference datasets.
From: Worldwide rooftop photovoltaic electricity generation may mitigate global warming
a, Grid-level comparison with Google Building Footprints (GBF), based on 17,497,097 overlapping grid cells. b, Grid-level comparison with Microsoft Building Footprints (MBF), based on 20,303,584 overlapping grid cells. c, Grid-level comparison with Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL), based on 132,799,408 overlapping grid cells. d, Grid-level comparison with World Settlement Footprint 3D (WSF3D), based on 24,834,895 overlapping grid cells. Due to the limited coverage and potential spatial completeness issues in the GBF and MBF datasets, we restricted our comparison to grids that contain building areas in both datasets. For comparisons with GHSL and WSF3D, we used global overlapping grids. The plots show the correlation between our estimated rooftop areas and the corresponding areas from the reference datasets at the grid level. Dashed lines represent the 1:1 relationship. e, Grid-level correlation matrix between the different reference datasets and our estimates, highlighting the strong correlations between our global rooftop area estimates and these reference datasets.
