A Preliminary Review on Three-Dimensional City Model

In this paper a review on current research on 3DCM is presented, and an alternative approach by integrating the concepts and techniques of object\|oriented method and Computer Aided Design (CAD) is suggested. Through the approach urban spatial entities as objects are extracted, which are represented with primary 3D elements (node, edge, face and body) and their combinations. In the light of the concept of object, the method supports the multiple representation of Level of Details (LOD). More importantly, topological relationships between objects are described so that 3D topological operations can be implemented.

Unified Data Model of Urban Air Pollution Dispersion and 3D Spatial City Model:Groundwork Assessment towards Sustainable Urban Development for Malaysia

Understanding the behavior of urban air pollution is important en route for sustainable urban development (SUD). Malaysia is on its mission to be a developed country by year 2020 comprehends dealing with air pollution is one of the indicators headed towards it. At present monitoring and managing air pollution in urban areas encompasses sophisticated air quality modeling and data acquisition. However, rapid developments in major cities cause difficulties in acquiring the city geometries. The existing method in acquiring city geometries data via ground or space measurement inspection such as field survey, photogrammetry, laser scanning, remote sensing or using architectural plans appears not to be practical because of its cost and efforts. Moreover, air monitoring stations deployed are intended for regional to global scale model whereby it is not accurate for urban areas with typical resolution of less than 2 km. Furthermore in urban areas, the pollutant dispersion movements are trapped between buildings initiating it to move vertically causing visualization complications which imply the limitations of existing visualization scheme that is based on two-dimensional (2D) framework. Therefore this paper aims is to perform groundwork assessment and discuss on the current scenario in Malaysia in the aspect of current policies towards SUD, air quality monitoring stations, scale model and detail discussion on air pollution dispersion model used called the Operational Street Pollution Model (OSPM). This research proposed the implementation of three-dimensional (3D) spatial city model as a new physical data input for OSPM. The five Level of Details (LOD) of 3D spatial city model shows the scale applicability for the dispersion model implementtation. Subsequently 3D spatial city model data commonly available on the web, by having a unified data model shows the advantages in easy data acquisition, 3D visualization of air pollution dispersion and improves visual analysis of air quality monitoring in urban areas.

Procedural modeling applied to the 3D city model of Bogota:A case study

Background Computer Generated Animations(CGA),when applied to three-dimensional(3D)city models(3DCM),can be used as powerful tools to support urban decision-making.This leads to a new paradigm,based on procedural modeling,that allows the integration of known urban structures.Methods This paper introduces a new workflow for the development of high-quality approximations of urban models in a short time and enables facilities to be imported from other cities into a given city model,following specific generation rules.Results Thus,this workflow provides a very simple approach to observe,study,and simulate the implementation of models already developed in other cities,in a city where they are not yet adopted.Examples of these models include all types of mobility systems and urban infrastructure.Conclusions This allows us to perceive the environmental impact of certain decisions in the real world,as well as to carry out simple simulations to determine the changes that can occur in the flows of people,traffic,and other city activities.

Study on Visualization of Virtual City Model Based on Internet

With the rapid development of computer graphics, distributed-computing and Internet, it is possible to achieve Internet-based virtual city. This paper dwells on the method of the terrain and its feature modeling and complex entity modeling in the virtual city. Then, discusses the method for Internet-based virtual city 3D visualization and the design of the Browser/Server architecture of the system of virtual city in the network environment. Finally, Java and Java 3D are used to show an experiment example, and the related conclusion about Internet-based virtual city 3D displaying and the client-side interactive operation is given.

An Automated Process of Creating 3D City Model for Monitoring Urban Infrastructures

This paper describes the process of designing models and tools for an automated way of creating 3D city model based on a raw point cloud.Also,making and forming 3D models of buildings.Models and tools for creating tools made in the model builder application within the ArcGIS Pro software.An unclassified point cloud obtained by the LiDAR system was used for the model input data.The point cloud,collected by the airborne laser scanning system(ALS),is classified into several classes:ground,high and low noise,and buildings.Based on the created DEMs,points classified as buildings and formed prints of buildings,realistic 3D city models were created.Created 3D models of cities can be used as a basis for monitoring the infrastructure of settlements and other analyzes that are important for further development and architecture of cities.

City Digital Twins: their maturity level and differentiation from 3D city models

The emerging field of City Digital Twins has advanced in recent years with the help of digital infrastructure and technologies connected to the Internet of Things(IoT).However,the evolution of this field has been so fast that a gap has opened in relation to systematic reviews of the relevant literature and the maturation of City Digital Twins on an urban scale.Our work bridges this gap by highlighting maturity in the field.We conducted a systematic literature review with bibliometric and content analysis of 41 selected papers published in Web of Science and Scopus data-bases,covering five areas:data types and sources,case studies,applied technologies and methods,maturity spectrum,and appli-cations.Based on maturity indicators,the majority of the reviewed studies(90%)were at initial to medium stages of maturity(up to element 3),most of them focused on 3D modelling,monitoring and visualisation.However,digital twins cannot be limited to 3D models,monitoring and visualisation,for they can be developed to include two-directional interactions between humans and com-puters.Such a high level of maturity,which was not found in the reviewed studies,requires advanced technologies and methods such as cloud computing,artificial intelligence,BIM and GIS.We also found that further studies are essential if the field is to handle the complex urban challenges of multidisciplinary digital twins.While City Digital Twins extend by definition beyond mere 3D city modelling,some studies involving 3D city models still refer to their subjects as City Digital Twins.Among the research gaps we identified,we’d like to highlight the need for near-real-time data analytics algorithms,which could furnish City Digital Twins with big data insights.Other opportunities include public participation capabilities to increase social collaboration,integrating BIM and GIS technologies and improving storage and computation infrastructure.

Research and Practice in Three-Dimensional City Modeling

The way we interact with spatial data has been changed from 2D map to 3D Virtual Geographic Environment （VGE）. Three-dimensional representations of geographic information on a computer are known as VGE, and in particular 3D city models provide an efficient way to integrate massive, heterogenous geospatial information and georeferenced information in urban areas. 3D city modeling （3DCM） is an active research and practice topic in distinct application areas. This paper intro- duces different modeling paradigms employed in 3D GIS, virtual environment, and AEC/FM. Up-to-date 3DCM technologies are evolving into a data integration and collaborative approach to represent the full spatial coverage of a city, to model both aboveground and underground, outdoor and indoor environments including man-made objects and natural features with 3D geometry, appearance, topology and semantics.

Real-time visualization of 3D city models at street-level based on visual saliency

Street-level visualization is an important application of 3D city models.Challenges to street-level visualization include the cluttering of buildings due to fine detail and visualization performance.In this paper,a novel method is proposed for streetlevel visualization based on visual saliency evaluation.The basic idea of the method is to preserve these salient buildings in a scene while removing those that are non-salient.The method can be divided into pre-processing procedures and real-time visualization.The first step in pre-processing is to convert 3D building models at higher Levels of Detail(Lo Ds) into LoD 1 models with simplified ground plans.Then,a number of index viewpoints are created along the streets; these indices refer to both the position and the direction of each street site.A visual saliency value is computed for each building,with respect to the index site,based on a visual difference between the original model and the generalized model.We calculate and evaluate three methods for visual saliency:local difference,global difference and minimum projection area.The real-time visualization process begins by mapping the observer to its closest indices.The street view is then generated based on the building information stored in those indexes.A user study shows that the local visual saliency method performs better than do the global visual saliency,area and image-based methods and that the framework proposed in this paper may improve the performance of 3D visualization.

Fast registration of multisource three-dimensional city models in GeoGlobe

We address the registration problem of multisource three-dimensional(3D)human-made buildings with remote sensing images and the earth’s surface in the context of virtual globes.Challenges include fast transformation of 3D coordinates with different reference systems as well as the efficient use of original model information for rigorous and accurate model registration.This paper introduces a novel fast and scalable registration approach that can establish correspondences between heterogeneous external 3D city models and images/terrain surfaces of virtual globes in an efficient and accurate manner.The approach utilizes the projected 3D feature information of 3D city models to develop robust coordinate transformation and reliable model registration methods.The proposed approach builds a solid foundation for the fusion of multisource geospatial data in a united virtual globe reference framework.We report experimental results of online registration tasks for up to over 13K buildings in an integrated 3D virtual globe platform,namely,GeoGlobe.

Visualisation and personalisation of multi-representations city models

City models have a wide variety of uses that require different kind of data representation or data models.Having a dynamic model that enables picking the right representations(meshes,volumetric data,point cloud,etc.)can prove useful to adapt an application to each user’s needs.In this paper,we present an original method to create personalised visualisations of 3D city models on the fly.By organising the server data in a hierarchy of tiles,we are able to generate personalised models based on the user’s preferences.These preferences take the shape of a set of rules that apply to each tile or city object and allow the user to choose which representation of the object to use depending on its position or semantic information(classification,height,etc.).Our method is designed around existing standards,guaranteeing the interoperability of the produced models.

A virtual globe-based time-critical adaptive visualization method for 3D city models

3D city models,which are important items of content on the virtual globe,are characterized by complicated structures and large amounts of data.These factors make the visualization of 3D city models highly dependent upon the performance of computer hardware.Thus,achieving the efficient rendering of 3D city models using different hardware performance levels represents one of the key problems currently facing researchers.This paper proposes a time-critical adaptive visualization method that first estimates the possible rendering time for each model according to the data structure of the model in addition to the CPU/GPU performance of the computer.It then dynamically adjusts the rendering level for each model based on the results of an estimation of the rendering time to ensure that the final scene can be completed within a given time.To verify the effectiveness and flexibility of this method,it is applied using different computers.The results show that the adaptive visualization method presented in this paper not only can adapt to computers with different levels of performances but also demonstrates an obvious improvement in the time estimation precision,visual effects,and optimization speed relative to existing adaptive visualization methods.

Balance of Datum Land Prices Among Cities Based on the City Gravitation Model and Stochastic Diffusion Equation

A balance of urban datum land prices is achieved to harmonize regional land prices and make the prices truly reflect different economic development levels and land prices among cities. The current piecewise linear interpolation balance method widely used has two drawbacks that always lead to an unsatisfactory balance among some cities. When the excess of land price in the central city to the surrounding zone reaches a certain degree, land price in the circumjacent city is not only consistent with the local land grade and land use level, but also influenced by the diffusion of land price in the central city. Thus, a new balanced scheme of datum land prices based on the city gravitation model and stochastic diffusion equation is brought forward. Finally, the new method is examined in the practice of datum land price balance in Hubei Province, China.

Impact of Accessibility on Housing Prices in Dalian City of China Based on a Geographically Weighted Regression Model

This paper studies the relationship between accessibility and housing prices in Dalian by using an improved geographically weighted regression model and house prices, traffic, remote sensing images, etc. Multi-source data improves the accuracy of the spatial differentiation that reflects the impact of traffic accessibility on house prices. The results are as follows: first, the average house price is 12 436 yuan(RMB)/m^2, and reveals a declining trend from coastal areas to inland areas. The exception was Guilin Street, which demonstrates a local peak of house prices that decreases from the center of the street to its periphery. Second, the accessibility value is 33 minutes on average, excluding northern and eastern fringe areas, which was over 50 minutes. Third, the significant spatial correlation coefficient between accessibility and house prices is 0.423, and the coefficient increases in the southeastern direction. The strongest impact of accessibility on house prices is in the southeastern coast, and can be seen in the Lehua, Yingke, and Hushan communities, while the weakest impact is in the northwestern fringe, and can be seen in the Yingchengzi, Xixiaomo, and Daheishi community areas.

Countermeasures for Solving the Environmental Problems and Accelerating the Model City Construction of Xi'an

Through careful study, it found that the key and difficult points of affecting and restricting Xi＇an to reach the model city construction standards in provincial and national levels were ＂urban air environment quality standards＂ and ＂water qualification rate of urban water environment function area＂. In order to tackle with the weak links, highlight the important points and focus on the difficult points to strengthen scientific and technological innovation, we actively explored new ideas and ways to resolve the dilemma in meeting the two standards of model city construction, and we managed to put forward the countermeasures to resolve the dilemma through innovating system and mechanism. ＂Place master system＂ should be carded out quickly to meet the ＂urban air environment quality standards＂, while ＂river master system＂ should be implemented as soon as possible to reach the ＂water qualification rate of urban water environment function area＂. The aim of this study was to enhance the qualification rates of the indicators for model city construction to make Xi＇an successfully pass the provincial and national assessment of model city construction through dealing with the weak links to accelerate the realization of becoming model environmental protection city.

Carbon Emission of Regional Land Use and Its Decomposition Analysis: Case Study of Nanjing City, China

Through the matching relationship between land use types and carbon emission items, this paper estimated carbon emissions of different land use types in Nanjing City, China and analyzed the influencing factors of carbon emissions by Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index（LMDI） model. The main conclusions are as follows： 1） Total anthropogenic carbon emission of Nanjing increased from 1.22928 ×10^7 t in 2000 to 3.06939 × 10^7 t in 2009, in which the carbon emission of Inhabitation, mining ＆ manufacturing land accounted for 93% of the total. 2） The average land use carbon emission intensity of Nanjing in 2009 was 46.63 t/ha, in which carbon emission intensity of Inhabitation, mining ＆ manufacturing land was the highest（200.52 t/ha）, which was much higher than that of other land use types. 3） The average carbon source intensity in Nanjing was 16 times of the average carbon sink intensity（2.83 t/ha） in 2009, indicating that Nanjing was confronted with serious carbon deficit and huge carbon cycle pressure. 4） Land use area per unit GDP was an inhibitory factor for the increase of carbon emissions, while the other factors were all contributing factors. 5） Carbon emission effect evaluation should be introduced into land use activities to formulate low-carbon land use strategies in regional development.

Empirical Research on Carrying Capacity of Human Settlement System in Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China

Using the theories of population carrying capacity and ecological elasticity in other fields for reference, the connotation of regional human settlement system was defined from the viewpoint of the complex relationship among the factors such as regional population, resources, environment and economic and social development in the context of China′s rapid urbanization. Then the concept and characterization methods of the regional human settlement carrying capacity were proposed by means of population scale. Furthermore, a model of carrying capacity-pressure-state-response(CPSR) on regional human settlement system was established by referencing pressure-state-response(PSR) model, and the Catastrophe Theory was introduced to determine the corresponding standards of multi-criteria programming and evaluation. Taking Dalian City, Liaoning Province, China as an example, an empirical analysis on evaluation of human settlement system from 2000 to 2012 was carried out. The results showed that the carrying capacity of human settlement system in Dalian was fluctuating between 9.6 × 106 to 10 × 106 persons with a quantitative stage of the dynamic regulation. During the research period the load index of human settlement system in Dalian dropped from 0.96 to 0.84 with a lower pressure of human settlement system than the national average level. And the emergency response grades of human settlement system in Dalian were kept in grade Ⅱ(orange warning) or grade Ⅲ(yellow warning). Human settlement system of Dalian was in slight security state as a whole, but the load had a tendency of increase in recent years. The related departments should pay close attention to regional human settlement system and take active measures to improve human settlement by both intensity control and total quantity control. By comparison, analysis and discussion, it was considered that the results were basically accordded with the current situations of human settlement in Dalian, and the evaluation results were more reliable, visualized and easily applied in practice. Therefore, the above-mentioned concepts, characterization and evaluation methods of the regional human settlement system and carrying capacity could provide a new thought and method for quantitative evaluation of human settlement.

Distribution of primary school based on spatial network comprehensive model in low-income mountainous cities： a case study in Wanyuan, China

Focusing on the peculiarities of urban construction resulting from specific mountain terrains, the purpose of this study is to find out a suitable method based on a Spatial Network Comprehensive Model(SNCM) to reasonably plan and distribute primary schools in low-income mountain cities. The construction principles and advantages of the SNCM method are proposed and the method tested in Wanyuan city of Qinba Mountain area(Southwest China) to verify its feasibility and optimization. Taking account of the mountain terrain and its influence on user behavior, we used the SNCM method to build a comprehensive model which integrates the road slope and the walking speed of pupils into the basic spatial model. The model is used to calculate a reasonable layout of the primary schools and to validate the rationale. The results show that the SNCM method can be effectively applied in low-income mountainous cities. It can not only improve the accessibility and service efficiency of primary schools using as little capital-investment as possible, but also help the city grow in an intensive and efficient way.

Managing underground legal boundaries in 3D-extending the CityGML standard

Legal boundaries are used for delineating the spatial extent of ownership property’s spaces.In underground environments,these boundaries are defined by referencing physical objects,surveying measurements,or projections.However,there is a gap in connecting and managing these boundaries and underground legal spaces,due to a lack of data model.A 3D data model supporting underground land administration(ULA)should define and model these boundaries and the relationships between them and underground ownership spaces.Prominent 3D data models can be enriched to model underground legal boundaries.This research aims to propose a new taxonomy of underground legal boundaries and model them by extending CityGML,which is a widely used 3D data model in the geospatial science domain.We developed,implemented,and tested the model for different types of underground legal boundaries.The implemented prototype showcased the potential benefits of CityGML for managing underground legal boundaries in 3D.The proposed 3D underground model can be used to address current challenges associated with communicating and managing legal boundaries in underground environments.While this data model was specifically developed for Victoria,Australia,the proposed model and approach can be used and replicated in other jurisdictions by adjusting the data requirements for underground legal boundaries.

A Comparative Study on Pattern of Urban Forest Patch and Its Ecological Benefit Evaluation in the Park of Hefei Based on the GIS Technology

Based on the GIS technology, CITYgreen computer model was used in this paper to estimate ecological benefits of urban forest in the park of Hefei city.It used this technology to make an analysis on urban forest ecological benefits. The research discussed how to use the technology of CITYgreen model developed in USA to account urban forest benefits in China. The results showed that forests in Xiaoyao Jin Park occupied about 52.62% of park land area and Xinghua Park13.00% respectively, indicating that Xiaoyaojin Park is dominated by large trees such as arbors, and Xinghua Park dominated by laws, with low coverage. Besides,the comprehensive eco-benefits of Xiaoyaojin Park and Xinghua Park were 5.150 3and 1.354 3 million yuan and per unit area eco-benefits were 144 000 and 47 400yuan/hm^2, which indicated that Xiaoyaojin Park makes the greatest contribution in ecological benefits.

CityGML goes mobile: application of large 3D CityGML models on smartphones

CityGML,a semantic information model for digital/virtual city models has become quite popular in various scenarios.While the data format is still actively under development,it is already supported by different software solutions,especially GIS-based desktop applications.Mobile systems on the other hand are still neglected,even though the georeferenced objects of CityGML have many application fields,for example,in the currently popular area of location-based Augmented Reality.In this paper we present an independent multi-platform CityGML viewer,its architecture and specific implementation techniques that we use to realize and optimize the process of visualizing CityGML data for use in Augmented Reality.The main focus lies in improving the implementation on mobile devices,such as smartphones,and assessing its usability and performance in comparison to web-based approaches.Due to the constrained hardware resources of smartphones,it is a particular challenge to handle complex 3D objects and large virtual worlds as provided by CityGML,not only in terms of memory and storage space,but also with respect to mobile processing units and display sizes.