A spatial cognition-based urban building clustering approach and its applications

This article presents a spatial cognition analysis technique for automated urban building clustering based on urban morphology and Gestalt theory. The proximity graph is selected to present the urban mrphology. The proximity graph considers the local adjacency among buildings, providing a large degree of freedom in object displacement and aggregation. Then, three principles of Gestalt theories, proximity, similarity, and common directions, are considered to extract potential Gestalt building clusters. Next, the Gestalt features are further characterized with seven indicators, that is, area difference, height difference, similarity difference, orientation difference, linear arrangement difference, interval difference, and oblique degree of arrangement. A support vector machine (SVM)-based approach is employed to extract the Gestalt building clusters. This approach transforms the Gestalt cluster extraction into a supervised discrimination process. The method presents a generalized approach for clustering buildings of a given street block into groups, while maintaining the spatial pattern and adjacency of buildings during the displacement operation. In applications of urban building generalization and three-dimensional (3D) urban panoramic-like view, the method presented in this article adequately preserves the spatial patterns, distributions, and arrangements of urban buildings. Moreover, the final 3D panoramic-like views ensure the accurate appearance of important features and landscapes.     

A building label placement method for 3D visualizations based on candidate label evaluation and selection

Adding building labels greatly improves the recognizability of buildings and the readability of three-dimensional (3D) city scenes. However, building label placement is much more complex in 3D scenes than in two-dimensional (2D) maps. The annotation effect is influenced by the attributes of the 3D label, building visibility, and the spatial relationship between the building and viewpoint. In this context, automatically generating building labels for 3D scenes during interactions requires highly complex computations. By contrast, evaluating candidate labels and then selecting the suitable label for each building can be effectively implemented. This paper introduces an approach for labeling buildings in 3D scenes based on evaluations of label candidates. The proposed method predefines a candidate label set for each building. These candidates are then evaluated in terms of their attributes and the relationship between the labels and viewpoint at runtime. The best candidate label, or a situational alternative for each building, is then placed in order of comprehensive label priority to avoid annotation conflicts. A series of experiments demonstrate that this method effectively enhances the correlation of labels and buildings, improves interactive efficiency, and realizes a viable global label layout.     

A critical evaluation of 3D spatial information models for managing legal arrangements of multi-owned developments in Victoria,Australia

Three-dimensional (3D) spatial information models are increasingly being adopted to help communicate the spatial dimensions of complex built environments. Land administration practices in multi-owned developments include the subdivision, registration and management of legal interests associated with private, communal and public properties, which are often located along the vertical dimension. The spatial structure of each legal interest is normally composed of invisible spaces, defined as the inside and outside of multi-owned developments, as well as physically built structures. Additionally, a wide variety of legal boundary types mark out the spatial limits of the individual parts of each legal interest. These legal boundaries are typically delineated by either relying on fixed surveying measurements or referencing physically existent objects. This article provides a critical assessment of 3D spatial information models in terms of their capabilities for modelling legal interests and legal boundaries defined in the Victorian jurisdiction. We classify these models into three categories: purely legal, purely physical and integrated. This assessment provides the basis for developing a new 3D spatial information model, which would subsequently support a pathway towards realising the Victorian land administration system in a 3D digital environment.     

3D building roof reconstruction from airborne LiDAR point clouds: a framework based on a spatial database

Three-dimensional (3D) building models are essential for 3D Geographic Information Systems and play an important role in various urban management applications. Although several light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data-based reconstruction approaches have made significant advances toward the fully automatic generation of 3D building models, the process is still tedious and time-consuming, especially for massive point clouds. This paper introduces a new framework that utilizes a spatial database to achieve high performance via parallel computation for fully automatic 3D building roof reconstruction from airborne LiDAR data. The framework integrates data-driven and model-driven methods to produce building roof models of the primary structure with detailed features. The framework is composed of five major components: (1) a density-based clustering algorithm to segment individual buildings, (2) an improved boundary-tracing algorithm, (3) a hybrid method for segmenting planar patches that selects seed points in parameter space and grows the regions in spatial space, (4) a boundary regularization approach that considers outliers and (5) a method for reconstructing the topological and geometrical information of building roofs using the intersections of planar patches. The entire process is based on a spatial database, which has the following advantages: (a) managing and querying data efficiently, especially for millions of LiDAR points, (b) utilizing the spatial analysis functions provided by the system, reducing tedious and time-consuming computation, and (c) using parallel computing while reconstructing 3D building roof models, improving performance.     

Quality assessment for building footprints data on OpenStreetMap

In the past two years, several applications of generating three-dimensional (3D) buildings from OpenStreetMap (OSM) have been made available, for instance, OSM-3D, OSM2World, OSM Building, etc. In these projects, 3D buildings are reconstructed using the buildings’ footprints and information about their attributes, which are documented as tags in OSM. Therefore, the quality of 3D buildings relies strongly on the quality of the building footprints data in OSM. This article is dedicated to a quality assessment of building footprints data in OSM for the German city of Munich, which is one of the most developed cities in OSM. The data are evaluated in terms of completeness, semantic accuracy, position accuracy, and shape accuracy by using building footprints in ATKIS (German Authority Topographic–Cartographic Information System) as reference data. The process contains three steps: finding correspondence between OSM and ATKIS data, calculating parameters of the four quality criteria, and statistical analysis. The results show that OSM footprint data in Munich have a high completeness and semantic accuracy. There is an offset of about four meters on average in terms of position accuracy. With respect to shape, OSM building footprints have a high similarity to those in ATKIS data. However, some architectural details are missing; hence, the OSM footprints can be regarded as a simplified version of those in ATKIS data.     

An algorithm for on-the-fly K shortest paths finding in multi-storey buildings using a hierarchical topology model

This article presents an approach to computing K shortest paths in large buildings with complex horizontal and vertical connectivity. The building topology is obtained from Building Information Model (BIM) and implemented using directed multigraphs. Hierarchical design allows the calculation of feasible paths without the need to load into memory the topology of the entire building. It is possible to expand the graph with new connectivity on-the-fly. The paths calculated may be composed of traversable building components that are located inside the buildings or those that are both inside and outside buildings. The performance (computational time and heap size used) is optimized by using the appropriate collections (maps, lists and sets). The proposed algorithm is evaluated in several use-case scenarios – complete graphs and real building environments. In all test scenarios, the proposed path finding algorithm is faster and uses less memory when compared to the fast version of the Yen’s KSP algorithm. The proposed approach can be successfully used as a first level of coarse-to-fine path finding algorithms.     

A combinatorial data model for representing topological relations among 3D geographical features in micro‐spatial environments

This research is motivated by the need for 3D GIS data models that allow for 3D spatial query, analysis and visualization of the subunits and internal network structure of ‘micro‐spatial environments’ (the 3D spatial structure within buildings). It explores a new way of representing the topological relationships among 3D geographical features such as buildings and their internal partitions or subunits. The 3D topological data model is called the combinatorial data model (CDM). It is a logical data model that simplifies and abstracts the complex topological relationships among 3D features through a hierarchical network structure called the node‐relation structure (NRS). This logical network structure is abstracted by using the property of Poincaré duality. It is modelled and presented in the paper using graph‐theoretic formalisms. The model was implemented with real data for evaluating its effectiveness for performing 3D spatial queries and visualization.     

Simultaneously simulate vertical and horizontal expansions of a future urban landscape: a case study in Wuhan,Central China

While there are extensive studies of urban 2D forms, research on the varying geometric features and spatial distribution patterns of urban 3D spaces is comparatively rare. In this paper, we propose a coupled model, known as BPANN-CBRSortCA, which is based on a back propagation artificial neural network (BPANN) and case-based reasoning technology with sort cellular automaton (CBRSortCA) to simulate future urban building heights and their spatial distribution. BPANN–CBRSortCA uses BPANN to predict the vertical extrusion of building heights and uses CBRSortCA to simulate horizontal urban expansion. The BPANN–CBRSortCA model is innovative because of its capabilities to simultaneously project urban growth in the vertical and horizontal dimensions. The proposed model also overcomes the limitations of the traditional cellular automata models that cannot simulate ‘diffused’ urban expansion. This research used Wuhan City as a case study to simulate vertical and horizontal urban expansion from 2015 to 2025. The results showed the following: (1) in the next 10 years, new build-up will mainly appear along the edge of Hongshan and Hanyang Districts or will occupy bare land in the form of ‘filling’ and (2) the tallest buildings will be mainly located to the south of East Lake in Hongshan District and on undeveloped land within the city. These simulation results can provide a reference for future urban planning.     

A three-step approach of simplifying 3D buildings modeled by CityGML

CityGML (City Geography Markup Language), the OGC (Open Open Geospatial Consortium) standard on three-dimensional (3D) city modeling, is widely used in an increasing number of applications, because it models a city with rich geometrical and semantic information. The underlying building model differentiates four consecutive levels of detail (LoDs). Nowadays, most city buildings are reconstructed in LoD3, while few landmarks in LoD4. For visualization or other purposes, buildings in LoD2 or LoD1 need to be derived from LoD3 models. But CityGML does not indicate methods for the automatic derivation of the different LoDs. This article presents an approach for deriving LoD2 buildings from LoD3 models which are essentially the exterior shells of buildings without opening objects. This approach treats different semantic components of a building separately with the aim to preserve the characteristics of ground plan, roof, and wall structures as far as possible. The process is composed of three steps: simplifying wall elements, generalizing roof structures, and then reconstructing the 3D building by intersecting the wall and roof polygons. The first step simplifies ground plan with wall elements projected onto the ground. A new algorithm is developed to handle not only simple structures like parallel and rectangle shapes but also complicated structures such as non-parallel, non-rectangular shapes and long narrow angles. The algorithm for generalizing roof structure is based on the same principles; however, the calculation has to be conducted in 3D space. Moreover, the simplified polygons of roof structure are further merged and typified depending on the spatial relations between two neighboring polygons. In the third step, generalized 3D buildings are reconstructed by increasing walls in height and intersecting with roof structures. The approach has been implemented and tested on a number of 3D buildings. The experiments have verified that the 3D building can be efficiently generalized, while the characteristics of wall and roof structure can be well preserved after the simplification.     

广州主城区建筑组合的类型、空间分布与影响因素

基于2017年广州市单体建筑数据,以建筑高度和建筑间距2个指标,确定主城区基本的建筑组合,利用热点分析辨识更高尺度上的建筑组合,在此基础上分析广州建筑组合的空间分布及其影响因素.主要结论有:1)建筑组合有9种基本类型,4272斑块数量与面积在占比上具有很强的同步性.2)百米尺度斑块构成了主城区建筑组合的基本单元,并以混...     

民国时期广州市建成区主体建筑立体形态的恢复及其特征

基于1928年1﹕10 000的地形图,解译土地利用类型,确定建成区边界与建筑用地的空间范围。将建筑用地分为单体建筑、线状道路两侧的骑楼和面状同类建筑区3类。根据史料与现场调查,分别为点、线、面3类建筑的高度赋值,恢复不考虑海拔的建成区主体建筑立体形态。基于所建模型,从平面形态、平均高度、空间格局、宽高比、高度轴、天际线以及形态组合几方面对民国时期建成区立体形态特征进行分析归纳,得出如下结论：１）民国时期广州城市沿珠江发展使得城区轮廓呈狭长的带状;２）城市平均高度仅为6.07 ｍ,建筑物普遍低矮;３）建筑物在平面上为多级的棋盘网组合,而骑楼街构成的宽浅网格,成为当时空间尺度最大的建筑单元组合形态;４）道路宽度与两侧建筑物高度形成的宽高比大,城市具有较好的通透性;５）沿江西路与当时的城市中轴线中山纪念堂―市府合署大楼构成了倒“T”型城市空间高度轴,并在单体建筑高度空间分布与天际线的变化上得到很好的反映;６）城市立体形态主要由盆地、格网、谷地、台地等4种宽浅的单元组成。立体形态深层次上反映了当时生产力技术条件下政府与市场力量的综合作用,以及城市功能区分化在立体形态上的表现,从而也成为该时期华南地区依山傍水城市立体形态的重要标志。     

Spatial subdivision of complex indoor environments for 3D indoor navigation

As we realize that we spend most of our time in increasingly complex indoor environments, applications to assist indoor activities (e.g. guidance) have gained a lot of attention in the recent years. The advances in ubiquitous computing made possible the development of several spatial models intending to support context-aware and fine-grained indoor navigation systems. However, the available models often rely on simplified representations (e.g. 2D plans) and ignore the indoor features (e.g. furniture), thereby missing to reflect the complexity of the indoor environment. In this paper, we introduce the Flexible Space Subdivision framework (FSS) that allows to automatically identify the spaces that can be used for indoor navigation purpose. We propose a classification of indoor objects based on their ability to autonomously change location and we define a spatial subdivision of the indoor environment based on the classified objects and their functions. The framework can consider any 3D indoor configuration, the static and dynamic activities it hosts and it enables the possibility to consider all types of locomotion (e.g. walking, flying, etc.). It relies on input 3D models with geometric, semantic and topological information and identifies a set of subspaces with dedicated properties. We assess the framework against criteria defined in previous researches and we provide an example.     

The spatial distribution of green buildings in China: Regional imbalance,economic fundamentals,and policy incentives

Since China released its 3-Star green building rating system in 2006, the number of certified green buildings in the country has increased sharply. The concentrations of green buildings, however, are not spread evenly across different provinces. Employing the comprehensive green building data as of February 2014, this paper attempts to analyze the spatial distribution of green buildings in China and examine its underlying determinants. The empirical results confirm that a regional imbalance does exist with regard to green building numbers. The paper also finds that local economic fundamentals and subsidy-based incentive policies can explain the presence of green buildings, but the performance of real estate market, energy efficiency, and two specific green policies (local green standard and green building committee) are not significantly associated with green building concentrations at the provincial level. Based on the empirical results, the paper also yields a number of implications, which suggest that the government can promoting more green buildings via the alleviation of economic inequality across different regions, the establishment of a market-oriented mechanism, and the improvement of public awareness regarding sustainability. These implications will help to guide the government in its efforts to establish and implement more efficient and effective green policies. From a spatial perspective, this study unveils a general picture regarding green building development in China.     

三维景观GIS几何建模方法——以无锡唐城为例

本文实现了以 4D测绘数据 (DEM、DOM、DLG、DRG)为基本数据源的无锡唐城古建筑三维数字景观GIS。同时 ,在三维GIS传统三维空间数据模型的基础上 ,提出面向对象的三维建模点对象的划分不同与二维GIS中的点对象 ;针对基于面状的三维GIS,提出有向曲线构建面状复杂单体的几何建模方法是较为简捷的途径。     

3D GIS空间索引技术研究

概括并分析3D GIS中使用的空间索引技术,介绍各类技术方法的基本思想;对典型的空间索引方法进行分类,综合比较其优缺点和适用对象;按照空间分割方式将三维空间索引分为规则分割和对象分割两大类,规则分割包括规则网格、BSP树、八叉树、KD树、KDB树和R树系列等,对象分割则通过层次包围体来实现。指出在3D GIS实际应用中,应根据实际情况和应用需要组合多种索引技术,进而生成灵活、高效的索引机制。     

A Study of Governance Arrangements for Land Use and Natural Resource Management Planning in Cape York Peninsula

Complex intersecting social, economic and environmental dilemmas in Australia's Cape York Peninsula present a number of challenges for planners seeking to develop and implement land use and natural resource management (NRM) plans. There have been five different attempts at land use and NRM planning in Cape York Peninsula over the last 20 years. These processes have (to greater or lesser extents) failed to deliver community-owned and government-supported plans to guide development and/or the management of the region's natural resources. The region is remote, sparsely populated, and home to a significant Indigenous population. Much of the contestation within the region surrounds the access, use and ownership of the region's internationally valuable natural resources. This paper reviews, from the literature, the relevancy and applicability of criteria for best practice planning and governance. A range of identified best practice governance and planning principles are applied to assess the governance arrangements for planning in the Peninsula. The paper finds that decision-making arrangements for land use and NRM planning in the Peninsula are still in their infancy and are inadequate to support effective outcomes. The paper concludes that broader attention to best practice principles in governance for planning is needed to improve planning outcomes.     

OutDet: an algorithm for extracting the outer surfaces of building information models for integration with geographic information systems

The integration of Building Information Modelling (BIM) and geographic information systems (GIS) is a promising but challenging topic to solve problems in construction industry. However, loading and rendering rich BIM geometric data and large-scale GIS spatial information in a unified system is still technologically challenging. Current efforts mainly simplify the geometry in BIM models, or convert BIM geometric data to a lower level of detail (LOD). By noticing that only exterior features of BIM models are visible from outdoor observation points, culling BIM interior facilities can dramatically reduce the computational burden when visualizing BIM models in GIS. This study explores the outline detection problem and presents the OutDet algorithm, which selects representative observation points, transforms & projects the BIM geometric data into the same coordinate system, and detects the visible facilities. Empirical study results show that OutDet can cull a large portion of unnecessary features when rendering BIM models in GIS. The use of outlines of BIM models is not an alternative but rather a supplementary approach for current solutions. Jointly using LOD and outer surface can help improve the efficiency of integrated BIM-GIS visualization.Because OutDet retains BIM geometry and semantics, it can be applied to more BIM-GIS applications..     

Watermarking of digital geospatial datasets: a review of technical,legal and copyright issues

Gathering data accounts for more than 80% of the cost of any GIS project. Fast Internet connections and digital datasets threaten the investments of data producers through data piracy. Outside the GIS community this problem has been known for a long time, and possible solutions exist for digital imagery, formatted text, 3D meshes and so on, showing possible links to typical spatial data. This is largely achieved through embedding hidden information in a dataset without producing perceptible changes in the data, a process known as watermarking. The producer can recover the embedded information on request in order to produce evidence of ownership in a court, so the overall strategy relies on a legal basis rather than technical ones. This paper analyses the state-of-the-art for watermarking protection in digital geographical datasets. Digital imagery is demonstrably a more mature area than geographical information, even with multiple commercial vendors offering watermarking protection. 2D vector and point datasets have received less attention from the research community; however, 3D meshes have been considered by the CAD community and a handful of techniques are available for that case, and they are reviewed here.     

大连市中山区城市建筑垂直特征对城市热环境效应的影响

以大连市中山区的遥感和建筑数据为基础,利用单窗算法和相关分析方法,研究2007年、2017年研究区的地表温度空间分异特征,以及地表温度与建筑高度的相关性。研究结果表明： 2007年、2017年研究区最低温度由22.497℃增长到29.015℃,最高温度由36.091℃增长到43.213℃。研究区北部、解放路和中南路沿线、青泥洼-天津街商贸集聚区附近温度明显增高。 2007年、2017年,研究区区域内建筑都有所增高,中山区北部和青泥洼-天津街商贸集聚区附近建筑明显增高,研究区建筑有向南蔓延的趋势。 2007年、2017年,地表温度与建筑高度呈现低相关性,相关系数分别为0.346、0.331。     

A visualization-oriented 3D method for efficient computation of urban solar radiation based on 3D–2D surface mapping

The temporal and spatial distribution of solar energy in urban areas is highly variable because of the complex building structures present. Traditional GIS-based solar radiation models rely on two-dimensional (2D) digital elevation models to calculate insolation, without considering building facades and complicated three-dimensional (3D) shading effects. Inspired by the ‘texture baking’ technique used in computer graphics, we propose a full 3D method for computing and visualizing urban solar radiation based on image-space data representation. First, a surface mapping approach is employed to project each 3D triangular mesh onto a 2D raster surface whose cell size determines the calculation accuracy. Second, the positions and surface normal vectors of each 3D triangular mesh are rasterized onto the associated 2D raster using barycentric interpolation techniques. An efficient compute unified device architecture -accelerated shadow-casting algorithm is presented to accurately capture shading effects for large-scale 3D urban models. Solar radiation is calculated for each raster cell based on the input raster layers containing such information as slope, aspect, and shadow masks. Finally, a resulting insolation raster layer is produced for each triangular mesh and is represented as an RGB texture map using a color ramp. Because a virtual city can be composed of tens of thousands of triangular meshes and texture maps, a texture atlas technique is presented to merge thousands of small images into a single large image to batch draw calls and thereby efficiently render a large number of textured meshes on the graphics processing unit.