dataunited-states
Are there any sources for free and distributable building footprint datasets for major cities around the United States?
Ideally, the data would also have the number of stories of each building; is that available as well?
I'll give you an idea of what I'd like to do: I want to estimate population within an area of a map based on building square-footage and day/night population densities.
I am not aware of any free source of shapefiles for pipelines. PHMSA's National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) does provide a viewer but it doesn't allow data to be downloaded. NPMS data can only be viewed one county at a time which is rather hard to use. NPMS data consists of gas transmission pipelines and hazardous liquid trunklines. It does not contain gathering or distribution pipelines. See https://www.npms.phmsa.dot.gov/
GIS Data Depot has statewide vector data, including hydro data. I routinely look to the state DNR for GIS data too, for example the Minnesota DNR GIS Data Deli has a wealth of data.
USGS Earth Explorer is one of the best sites for remote sensing data.
Hydro1k Database from EROS has a good selection of hydro related data including:
The attached image is the Earth Explorer interface.
Best Answer
Yes, Boston has some publicly available here for the metro area. This is just the building form, but there are some other shapefiles from the local authorities in this region that have number of floors (for Cambridge, Boston and Sommerville I believe). Using average floor heights you can also estimate it.
Updated:
Chicago: http://data.cityofchicago.org/Government/Boundaries-Buildings/w2v3-isjw
Seattle: http://data.seattle.gov/dataset/2009-Building-Outlines/y7u8-vad7
Bellingham: http://www.cob.org/services/maps/gis/index.aspx
Bloomington: http://bloomington.in.gov/documents/viewDocument.php?document_id=1870
Spokane: http://www.spokanecity.org/services/gis/data/
Kitsap County: http://www.kitsapgov.com/gis/metadata/