U.S. Census Bureau: Automated Detection and Classification of Nationwide Residential Construction

The U.S. Census Bureau tracks new home construction activity in approximately 20,000 jurisdictions and unincorporated areas every month. This includes all types of residential structures - single family homes, townhomes, and condominium buildings. The Census Bureau tracks these projects in three stages: New Starts, In Progress, and Completed. These status reports are used to calculate monthly investments in residential construction, which is one of the key economic indicators measuring the health of the US economy.

The Census Bureau has traditionally gathered construction data by manually monitoring building permits and conducting surveys. Unfortunately, this information is often out of date, incomplete, or inconsistent because construction permitting and reporting processes vary from one jurisdiction to the next.

Residential construction progress reports are more accurate and reliable across the nation because building sites are monitored directly by satellites that acquire imagery that can be analyzed by machine learning in an automated process that is consistent from month-to month and region-to-region.