Investigating the capabilities of semantic enrichment of 3D CityEngine data

摘要

In recent years the development of technology and the lifting of several technical limitations, has brought the third dimension to the fore. The complexity of urban environments and the strong need for land administration, intensify the need of using a three-dimensional cadastral system. Despite the progress in the field of geographic information systems and 3D modeling techniques, there is no fully digital 3D cadastre. The existing geographic information systems and the different methods of three-dimensional modeling allow for better management, visualization and dissemination of information. Nevertheless, these opportunities cannot be totally exploited because of deficiencies in standardization and interoperability in these systems. Within this context, CityGML was developed as an international standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for 3D city models' representation and exchange. CityGML defines geometry and topology for city modeling, also focusing on semantic aspects of 3D city information. The scope of CityGML is to reach common terminology, also addressing the imperative need for interoperability and data integration, taking into account the number of available geographic information systems and modeling techniques. The aim of this paper is to develop an application for managing semantic information of a model generated based on procedural modeling. The model was initially implemented in CityEngine ESRI's software, and then imported to ArcGIS environment. Final goal was the original model's semantic enrichment and then its conversion to CityGML format. Semantic information management and interoperability seemed to be feasible by the use of the 3DCities Project ESRJ tools, since its database structure ensures adding semantic information to the CityEngine model and therefore automatically convert to CityGML for advanced analysis and visualization in different application areas.