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CityGML is an Official OGC Standard

posted by Satri on Thursday November 27, @07:35AM        Permalink  Trackback URI  Slashdotthis  Diggthis  Del.icio.us
from the standardized-cities-all-over-the-place dept.

This is "old geonews" from last August, but since CityGML was not mentioned for a while, I though pertinent of sharing this with our users: CityGML (City Geography Markup Language) has been officially adopted as an OGC standard. See the useful links from this Spatially Adjusted entry: "I’m still a CityGML newbie, but the more I look at the standard and learn about it, the more I’m excited about what we’ll be able to do in the future with BIM and GIS. Moving data back and forth between BIM and GIS is almost impossible today, but hopefully this is a huge step forward." GIS User shared a press release informing us that Safe Software spatial ETL tool already supports CityGML. See also related stories below.

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Related Stories

CityGML: An Open Standard for 3D City Models [+]

Directions Mag has an interesting article about CityGML, an open standard for 3D city models. From the article: "As Google and Microsoft clearly understand, there is a latent demand for 3D visualization of cities. But visualization is just the tip of the iceberg. Many other applications would also benefit. [...] CityGML is a common information model for representing 3D urban objects. It defines classes and relations for the most relevant topographic objects in cities and regional models with respect to their geometric, topological, semantic and appearance properties. [...] For example, graphic rendering of data encoded in CityGML can be accomplished using standardized computer graphics data formats like VRML, GeoVRML, X3D or Universal 3D (U3D)."

BIM: Building Information Modeling 1 comment [+]

I just learned about Building Information Modeling last week at GeoTec 2007, including talks from the OGC and about CityGML. The CAD-GIS Interoperability shares his account of the U.S. National BIM conference while Vector One shares his view on BIM and GIS. From Vector One: "When I consider BIM, I think of it not solely in terms of one structure, but also inclusive of the ’space’ around and interacting with a given structure. Those questions I might ask of CAD system during the design, operation and management of a structure are only part of a larger geospatial equation, one including GIS. Why? Because GIS are capable of analyzing the relationships of space and features independently or collectively, together."

Various Directions Mag Articles 1 comment [+]

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Autodesk Geospatial Acquires 3D Geo GmbH [+]

From All Points Blog : "The German company provides "software and services for geo-visualization: solutions for effectively creating, analyzing, managing, and distributing large-scale geo information" and is a "maker of intelligent 3D urban models software." Further, "The products of 3D Geo are made in accordance with international standards such as CityGML." The company is based in Potsdam, Germany and is privately held."

Technology: Safe Software Releases FME 2009 [+]

Spatially Adjusted mentioned the release of Safe Software's FME 2009 and links to the 'What's great' brochure [pdf]. Along with performance improvements, SA notes "three new formats supported that really have me excited; CityGML 1.0, Adobe Geospatial PDF and OpenStreetMap XML". Additionally, the Random Nodes blog offers an entry named "FME 2009 – It’s the little things". Spatial Sustain has his own on FME 2009 named "Why Shoot for Faster?": "The motivations that they have for their work are compelling, as their products solve some very painful problems. For instance, say you’re a large utility that just bought another large utility, but all the details about your critical assets are stored on two different GIS systems that are incompatible. One of the major reasons for consolidating the two systems is that you’ll be able to combine operations and increase efficiencies, but the two entirely different systems are a barrier to reaching that goal. Here’s where Safe steps in and saves the day, helping to make both systems work together, and often rather quickly." See also previous stories below.

• 5 years too late

  (Score:2)

  by lxnyce (1043) on Thursday November 27, @10:55AM (#3037)
  ( http://www.vizure.com/ )

  Why would anyone in the right mind support this format while KML exists? Granted we could have used this a while back, it's now obsolete due to the defacto standard, kml. But hey, if you want to support it as your base output format and have almost no one else be able to read it, be my guest.

  [ Reply to This ]
  • Re:5 years too late

    (Score:3)

    by Satri (3) on Thursday November 27, @12:16PM (#3038)
    ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )

    I don't know much about CityGML, or even KML, but I believe CityGML addresses things you simply can't do/encode with KML. From the CityGML wiki [citygmlwiki.org]: "It defines the classes and relations for the most relevant topographic objects in cities and regional models with respect to their geometrical, topological, semantical and appearance properties. Included are generalization hierarchies between thematic classes, aggregations, relations between objects, and spatial properties. In contrast to other 3D vector formats, CityGML is based on a rich, general purpose information model in addition to geometry and graphics content that allows to employ virtual 3D city models for sophisticated analysis tasks in different application domains like simulations, urban data mining, facility management, and thematic inquiries." Am I wrong?

    [ Reply to This | Parent ]
    • Re:5 years too late

      (Score:3)

      by lxnyce (1043) on Thursday November 27, @02:47PM (#3039)
      ( http://www.vizure.com/ )

      You're correct in that it is more tailored to a specific cause, however the adoption rate is pretty low. My main point is that most folks publishing models are going to do so with the intent of bringing them into an application to visualize. With this in mind, most published models will probably come as KML/DAE (collada). It's kind of like vrml or sedris. They may be great formats, but essentially they're doomed because they don't have a high adoption rate.

      [ Reply to This | Parent ]
      • Re:5 years too late

        (Score:3)

        by Satri (3) on Thursday November 27, @02:59PM (#3040)
        ( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )

        I think I understand but I still somewhat disagree. It doesn't necessarily matter if the adoption rate is low. Where I work we use some special data formats which have totally low/null adoption rate outside our specific domain (meteorology), but even if the public adoption of this standard is inexistant, the format matters a great deal to the ones who are actually using it and need to share information with others in the domain.
        
        I feel the same for CityGML. It might properly suit some people's need and adoption, say in the BIM field, may become surprising for these specialists (this is an uneducated guess on my part). As for wide adoption of CityGML, I totally agree that it will never happen - but that can be true for a lot of useful formats and standards... :-)

        [ Reply to This | Parent ]