3DCityDB - a 3D geodatabase solution for the management, analysis, and visualization of semantic 3D city models based on CityGML

Abstract

Over the last decade, more and more cities and even countries worldwide are creating semantic 3D city models of their physical environment based on the international CityGML standard issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). CityGML is an open data model and XML-based data exchange format describing the most relevant urban and landscape objects along with their spatial and non-spatial attributes, relations, and their complex hierarchical structures in five levels of detail. 3D city models, which are structured according to CityGML, are often used for various complex GIS simulation and analysis tasks, which go far beyond pure 3D visualization. Due to the large size and complexity of the sometimes country-wide 3D geospatial data, the GIS software vendors and service providers face many challenges when building 3D spatial data infrastructures for realizing the efficient storage, analysis, management, interaction, and visualization of the 3D city models based on the CityGML standard. Hence, there has been strong demand for an open and comprehensive software solution that can provide full support of the aforementioned functionalities. The '3D City Database' (3DCityDB) is a free 3D geo-database solution for CityGMLbased 3D city models. 3DCityDB has been developed as an Open Source and platform-independent software suite to facilitate the development and deployment of 3D city model applications. The 3DCityDB software package consists of a database schema for spatially enhanced relational database management systems (ORACLE Spatial or PostgreSQL/PostGIS) with a set of database procedures and software tools allowing to import, manage, analyze, visualize, and export virtual 3D city models according to the CityGML standard. Within this paper, the software suite is illustrated and explained in detail with respect to the related technical implementations and the underlying conceptual software design. Moreover, the utilization of 3DCityDB in different projects and practical application fields are also presented in this paper.

A Review of 3d Gis for Use in Creating Virtual Historic Dublin

“…However, in order to import SketchUp models into PostGIS, a CityGML file must be created from the SketchUp model and a software called 3DCityDB is required to transfer CityGML into PostgreSQL/PostGIS. 3DCityDB is a free Open Source software suite consisting of a database schema allowing the import, manage, analyse, visualise, and export of virtual 3D city models according to the CityGML standard (Yao et al, 2018). 3DCityDB allows the CityGML data model to be mapped onto the relational schema of spatially-enabled database management system (DBMS) such as Oracle Spatial (since version 10g) and PostgreSQL/PostGIS…”

Modeling, Monitoring, and Validating Green Roof and Green Facade Solutions with Semantic City Models Using Low Cost Sensors and Open Software Infrastructures

“…This effort is presented in [52,53] with the first stable version presented in 2018 at the 10th meeting in of the OGC CityGML working group in Delft [54]. Currently the extension contains one core module and four topic modules, Building Physics, Energy Systems, Material and Construction, and Occupant Behavior, which are all described in detail in [55].…”

City Maker: Reconstruction of Cities from OpenStreetMap Data for Environmental Visualization and Simulations

“…Although storing such information as shape files for two-dimensional models may be considered appropriate, such large data providing 3D information require an efficient method of storage and processing [3]. Especially storage might be a major issue for larger study areas [7]. Furthermore, as the data are going to be utilized for other purposes and applications, a proper geometric and semantic structuring of the data for better accuracy is essential [1].…”

“…As OSM data contain a hierarchical description of point, line and polygon features [26], which are the common types of features used in GIS, it is a convenient data source to utilize. For hierarchical description of city models, CityGML is an accepted standard to represent large 3D urban environments and therefore it has been used in different approaches, such as modeling cities and landscapes [27], web representation of large cities [3], visualization and analysis of cities [7] and certain simulations based on CityGML data [28]. As CityGML format contains a structure to define highly detailed cities, it would be useful if the study area is well-investigated.…”