  Despite abundant data on the spatial distribution of contemporary human
settlements, historical data on the long-term evolution of human settlements at
fine spatial and temporal granularity is scarce, limiting our quantitative
understanding of long-term changes of built-up areas. This is because commonly
used mapping methods (e.g., image classification) and suitable data sources
(i.e., aerial imagery, multi-spectral remote sensing data, LiDAR) have only
been available in recent decades. However, there are alternative data sources
such as cadastral records that are digitally available, containing relevant
information such as building age information, allowing for an approximate,
digital reconstruction of past building distributions. We conducted a
non-exhaustive search of open and publicly available data resources from
administrative institutions in the United States and gathered, integrated, and
harmonized cadastral parcel data, tax assessment data, and building footprint
data for 33 counties, wherever building footprint geometries and building
construction year information was available. The result of this effort is a
unique dataset which we call the Multi-Temporal Building Footprint Dataset for
33 U.S. Counties (MTBF-33). MTBF-33 contains over 6.2 million building
footprints including their construction year, and can be used to derive
retrospective depictions of built-up areas from 1900 to 2015, at fine spatial
and temporal grain and can be used for data validation purposes, or to train
statistical learning approaches aiming to extract historical information on
human settlements from remote sensing data, historical maps, or similar data
sources. MTBF-33 is available at http://doi.org/10.17632/w33vbvjtdy.
