Bentley has been exploring the impact and application of 3D City GIS for some time, and they’ve been thinking along the sustainability lines for a while now as well. The design technology for 3D city models have now come together with the concept of sustainability in a new white paper titled, “3D City GIS – A Major Step Towards Sustainable Infrastructure.”
The white paper does a good job of outlining the components and applications of a 3D city geospatial information system. These primary components are:
• 3D Modeling and Quality Control – Creating 3D models requires data, techniques, tools, and effort. Whether a municipality subcontracts the execution of the 3D models or creates them in-house, some quality control steps must be conducted before it can commit to the 3D City GIS.
• Persist, Manage and Serve – A scalable software platform is required in order to manage all the infrastructure related data, resources, and workflows, and to maximize control and productivity. The data can be persisted in various forms such as spatial databases, files, or even paper. Sharing information with the stakeholders, especially through the tremendous potential of the web, makes interoperability
a key component.
• 3D Analysis and Design – The ultimate goal of the system is to enable consumers to make appropriate decisions for sustaining society and the environment. Those decisions can take shape in the establishment of a new design. This is made possible by visualizing and analyzing all of the available information.
The white paper emphasizes the efficiency that can be gained by implementing a city-wide 3D model, along with a comprehensive accounting of the technology necessary to build and maintain such a system. There are also many examples here, mostly from European cities, that illustrate the different applications and benefits of this approach.
Bentley’s product line is well suited to offer the design, maintain and manage components of such a vision, providing a strong foundation that scales nicely. Their Geospatial Server, which is built upon their ProjectWise content management system, is ideally suited to manage files and databases and to offer the search and analysis capabilities for both 2D and 3D data.
Download the full white paper here to learn more about Bentley’s approach to 3D City GIS.
