DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.15611963
title: COMBUST: Gridded combustible mass estimates of the built environment in the conterminous United States (1975-2020)

description: The increasing occurrence of natural hazards such as wildfires and drought, along with urban expansion and land consumption, causes increasing levels of fire risk to populations and human settlements. Moreover, increasing geopolitical instability in many regions of the world requires evaluation of scenarios related to potential hazards caused by military operations. Quantitative knowledge on burnable fuels and their spatio-temporal distribution across landscapes is crucial for risk and potential damage assessments. While there is good understanding of the distributions of biomass fuels based on remote sensing observations, the combustible mass of the built environment has rarely been quantified in a spatially explicit manner. Therefore, we developed fine-grained estimates of urban fuels for the conterminous United States, estimating the combustible mass of building materials, building contents, and personal vehicles at 250 m spatial resolution. The resulting dataset is called COMBUST (Combustible mass of the built environment in the conterminous United States) and includes different backcasting scenarios from 1975 to 2020. COMBUST is based on the integration of a variety of geospatial data sources such as Earth-observation derived data, real estate data, statistical estimates and volunteered geographic information. COMBUST is accompanied by COMBUST PLUS, a set of consistently enumerated gridded datasets facilitating combustion exposure modelling of buildings and population. These datasets constitute a rich resource for ecological and social science applications, as well as for disaster risk management and planning-related decision making for U.S. settlements.

This is an updated version (Nov 2025), corrected for incorrect units in mass estimates in theme 3.

See the COMBUST data descriptor preprint for more information: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.08893
description: Components / themes of the COMBUST dataset:



Combustible mass by component: building contents, building material, personal vehicles, gas stations, refineries. (2020)

COMBUST-PLUS: Thematic layers of the built environment and biomass for exposure and interaction modelling (2010-2020)

Combustible mass of buildings and their content by material (2020)

Combustible mass of buildings and their content by building type (2020)

Historical estimates of combustible mass of personal vehicles (1975-2020), by material (1995-2020)

Historical estimates of combustible mass of buildings - 1975-2020 (5-yr intervals), model 1 (using HISDAC-US building indoor area change rates)

Historical estimates of combustible mass of buildings - 1975-2020 (5-yr intervals), model 2 (using HISDAC-US historical building density change rates)

Historical estimates of combustible mass of buildings - 1975-2020 (5-yr intervals), model 3 (using GHSL building volume change rates)

Mass of non-combustible materials for rubble estimation (2020)


COMBUST consists of a set of gridded datasets in GeoTIFF format, referenced in Albers Equal Area Conic projection for the conterminous US (EPSG:5070), enumerated in grid cells of 250m x 250m, aligned to the grid of the Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the U.S. (HISDAC-US, Leyk and Uhl, 2018). All mass estimates are reported in tons. COMBUST is organized in 9 ZIP archives, one for each of the nine themes (e.g., zip file 01_... corresponds to theme 1, see below).

COMBUST is a data integration effort, combining multiple data sources (e.g., Sentinel-1/2 derived building mass estimates from Frantz et al. (2023), building content mass model from Frishcosy et al. (2021), historical indicators of the built environment from HISDAC-US (Leyk and Uhl, 2018) and GHSL R2023A (Pesaresi et al. 2024), biomass estimates (Spawn et al. 2020) and several others.

Selected source data references:

Frantz, D., Schug, F., Wiedenhofer, D., Baumgart, A., Virág, D., Cooper, S., ... & Haberl, H. (2023). Unveiling patterns in human dominated landscapes through mapping the mass of US built structures. Nature Communications, 14(1), 8014.

Frishcosy, C. C., Wang, Y., & Xi, Y. (2021). A novel approach to estimate fuel energy from urban areas. Energy and Buildings, 231, 110609.

Leyk, S., & Uhl, J. H. (2018). HISDAC-US, historical settlement data compilation for the conterminous United States over 200 years. Scientific data, 5(1), 1-14.

Spawn, S. A., Sullivan, C. C., Lark, T. J., & Gibbs, H. K. (2020). Harmonized global maps of above and belowground biomass carbon density in the year 2010. Scientific Data, 7(1), 112.

Pesaresi, M., Schiavina, M., Politis, P., Freire, S., Krasnodębska, K., Uhl, J. H., ... & Kemper, T. (2024). Advances on the Global Human Settlement Layer by joint assessment of Earth Observation and population survey data. International Journal of Digital Earth, 17(1), 2390454.
description: Theme
Layer description
File names


1
Total comb. mass of the built environment incl. cars
combust_cm_total_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


1
Comb. mass of building material
combust_cm_buildingmaterial_all_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


1
Comb. mass of building contents
combust_cm_buildingcontent_total_2020.tif


1
Comb. mass of fuel in gas stations
combust_cm_gasstations_2020.tif


1
Comb. mass of fuel in refineries
combust_cm_refineries_2020.tif


1
Comb. mass of cars
combust_cm_car_total_t_2020.tif


2
Number of buildings (Source: Microsoft USBuildingFootprints)
combust_plus_num_buildings_2020.tif


2
Total built-up area (Source: Microsoft USBuildingFootprints)
combust_plus_builtup_area_2020.tif


2
Number of residential units (Source: HISDAC-US V2)
combust_plus_num_units_2020.tif


2
Share of residential buildings (Source: HISDAC-US V2)
combust_plus_residential_building_share_2020.tif


2
Average cadastral parcel size (Source: ZTRAX)
combust_plus_average_lotsize_2020.tif


2
Average building construction year (Source: ZTRAX)
combust_plus_average_constr_year_2020.tif


2
Earliest building construction year (Source: ZTRAX)
combust_plus_earliest_constr_year_2020.tif


2
Local property ownership rate (Source: ZTRAX)
combust_plus_local_ownership_rate_2020.tif


2
Resident population (Source: GHSL R2023A, GHS-POP)
combust_plus_resident_population_<1975-2020>.tif


2
Above-ground combustible biomass (Source: Spawn et al. 2020)
combust_plus_combustible_biomass_aboveground_2010.tif


2
Below-ground combustible biomass (Source: Spawn et al. 2020)
combust_plus_combustible_biomass_belowground_2010.tif


2
Total combustible biomass (Source: Spawn et al. 2020)
combust_plus_combustible_biomass_total_2010.tif


3
Mass of combustible building contents: cloth component
combust_cm_buildingcontent_cloth.tif


3
Mass of combustible building contents: paper component
combust_cm_buildingcontent_paper.tif


3
Mass of combustible building contents: plastic component
combust_cm_buildingcontent_plastic.tif


3
Mass of combustible building contents: wood component
combust_cm_buildingcontent_wood.tif


3
Mass of combustible building materials: petrochemical-based materials
combust_cm_buildingmaterial_all_other_petrochemical_based_materials_scenario_<low,mean,high>.tif


3
Mass of combustible building materials: bitumen
combust_cm_buildingmaterial_bitumen_scenario_<low,mean,high>.tif


3
Mass of combustible building materials: other biomass-based materials
combust_cm_buildingmaterial_other_biomass_based_materials_scenario_<low,mean,high>.tif


3
Mass of combustible building materials: timber
combust_cm_buildingmaterial_timber_scenario_<low,mean,high>.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (comm./indust.)
combust_cm_building_commercial_industrial_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (comm. - inner city.)
combust_cm_building_commercial_innercity_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (highrise)
combust_cm_building_highrise_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (lightweight)
combust_cm_building_lightweight_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (multifamily)
combust_cm_building_multifamily_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (single family)
combust_cm_building_singlefamily_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


4
Comb. mass of buildings (skyscraper)
combust_cm_building_skyscraper_scenario_<low,mean,high>_2020.tif


5
Historical estimates of total comb. mass of personal cars of residents
combust_cm_car_total_t_<Year>.tif


5
Historical estimates of comb. mass of personal cars of residents, plastic
combust_cm_car_plastic_t_<Year>.tif


5
Historical estimates of comb. mass of personal cars of residents, rubber
combust_cm_car_rubber_t_<Year>.tif


5
Historical estimates of comb. mass of personal cars of residents, fluids
combust_cm_car_fluidlubricants_t_<Year>.tif


6
Historical estimates of comb. mass of building since 1975, model 1, non-backcastable combustible mass
combust_cm_building_all_scenario_<low,mean,high>_backcasted_mod1_hisdacus_bui_<Year>.tif


7
Historical estimates of comb. mass of building since 1975, model 2, non-backcastable combustible mass
combust_cm_building_all_scenario_<low,mean,high>_backcasted_mod2_hisdacus_bupl_<Year>.tif


8
Historical estimates of comb. mass of building since 1975, model 3, non-backcastable combustible mass
combust_cm_building_all_scenario_<low,mean,high>_backcasted_mod3_ghsl_<Year>.tif


9
Non-combustible mass of cars, historical estimates
combust_noncombust_car_non_combmass_t_<Year>.tif


9
Non-combustible mass of building materials
combust_noncombust_<low,mean,high>_noncombust_total_mass_ext_t.tif