The National Human Settlement Layer (NHSL) is a collection of thematic datasets that describe the physical, social and economic characteristics of urban centres and rural/remote communities across Canada, and their vulnerability to natural hazards of concern. Detailed information on land use, buildings, people and capital assets are provided at the Census Dissemination Area administrative level for more than 454,000 settled areas across Canada.

The Physical Exposure Layer includes a delineation of human settlement areas and related functional land use classes across Canada, and provides detailed information on construction type, occupancy and design level of more than 9.1 million buildings; population dynamics at different times of day for 35.1 million people, and; capital asset valuation of buildings and contents totaling more than 8.3 trillion CAD$.

The Social Fabric Layer utilizes Census demographic data to evaluate broad spatial patterns of vulnerability, and neighbourhood-level capacities to withstand and recover from disaster events based on intrinsic characteristics of housing, family structure, individual autonomy and financial agency.

Although developed to support quantitative risk assessments and implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction at local and regional scales in Canada, the NHSL is also suitable for use in other integrated landscape modeling applications, including climate change adaptation and sustainable land use planning.