Characterizing 3D City Modeling Projects: Towards a Harmonized Interoperable System

Abstract

3D city models have become common geospatial data assets for cities that can be utilized in numerous fields, in tasks related to planning, visualization, and decision-making among others. We present a study of 3D city modeling focusing on the six largest cities in Finland. The study portrays a contradiction between the realized 3D city modeling projects and the expectations towards them: models do not appear to reach the broad applicability envisioned. In order to deal with contradiction and to support the development of future 3D city models, characteristics of different operational cultures in 3D city modeling are presented, and a concept for harmonizing the 3D city modeling is suggested.

Requirements, Development, and Evaluation of A National Building Standard—A Swedish Case Study

“…During the last decades 3D representations of buildings have become increasingly common, especially in larger cities, as parts of 3D city models. Already in 2012 there were more than a thousand city models worldwide [1] and the number is growing [2,3]. Reasons for creating 3D city models vary, earlier the models were mainly used for visualization, but now they are used for other purposes as well, such as urban planning, decision making, analyses, and also to replace the 2D base maps in urban areas, which requires that the city models have connections to e.g., cadastral registers.…”

“…In [3] the authors analyzed the functionality and usability of 19 3D city models in six Finnish cities. The following criteria were used: platform used; data accessibility, regional data coverage, and the use of as-planned information (e.g., BIM).…”

“…Most of the studied 3D city models included a small geographic area and had limited functionalities, but this was not what the cities had expected. In [3] the authors grouped the studied projects into three 3D city model categories: 3D GIS, BIM, and computer graphics. The categories overlap, but no project belonged to all categories.…”

“…Depending on the purpose of a 3D city model and expertise, the models are developed on different platforms using different techniques, e.g. using 3D GIS, BIM, or computer graphics [2,3,6].One obstacle with linking building information between BIM and 3D city models is that 3D city models generally have a hierarchically strict structure as opposed to BIM where the same information can be described and associated in many ways [7][8][9]. One possible way to overcome such interoperable issues is to use a classification system.…”

“…Depending on the purpose of a 3D city model and expertise, the models are developed on different platforms using different techniques, e.g. using 3D GIS, BIM, or computer graphics [2,3,6].…”