Considerations for a Contemporary 3D Cadastre for our Times

A significant number of studies has been carried out to establish 3D cadastre solutions to improve the registration of multi-level property. Since the inception of research on 3D cadastres (about 20 years ago), the world around us has changed significantly and this also partly changes the context regarding 3D cadastre: technology (e.g. visualisation of 3D information), acquisition techniques and BIM data availability, and policy and organisational structures. This paper aims to explore the implications of these changes on 3D cadastre research with a view to discussing considerations for a contemporary 3D cadastre for our times. The paper draws on social and technical trends, challenges, and gaps around 3D cadastre practices from three jurisdictions: the Australian state of Victoria, the Netherlands, and Singapore. The cases have been selected as examples of well-functioning and highly trusted cadastres and land registries committed to innovation in this area, and whose practitioners and researchers are leading the research in this domain. This set provides a breadth of insight that informs our discussion. However, we acknowledge the limitations of the findings as the research undertaken in these jurisdictions is not complicated by other issues with registration or cadastres as they may occur in other countries.Urban Data Scienc

How might an Lod Logic Framework Help to Bridge the 3D Cadastre Research-to-Practice Gap?: A Proposal for a Level of Implementation Framework

During the past decade, hundreds of research papers have been published on the challenge of registering multi-level properties in land administration and cadastral registrations. In addition, many pilots have been carried out to show potential solutions. However, fundamental and standardised solutions for 3D cadastre are still rare. In this article we analyse the reasons for few 3D cadastre solutions in practice and we propose a 3D cadastre definition framework that can distinguish between different levels of 3D cadastre implementation depending on a specific context. Based on a level of detail logic, it supports an incremental pathway for the implementation of 3D cadastre solutions. We list the scope of the framework and finish with conclusions and future work.Urban Data Scienc

Uncovering the challenges of urban digital twins: Identifying and ranking the barriers to operating digital twins in cities

To encourage discussion of the challenges hindering the design and implementation of digital twins, the authors have ranked them based on a systematic literature review combined with an expert survey.Urban Data Scienc

3D building metrics for urban morphology

Urban morphology is important in a broad range of investigations across the fields of city planning, transportation, climate, energy, and urban data science. Characterising buildings with a set of numerical metrics is fundamental to studying the urban form. Despite the rapid developments in 3D geoinformation science, and the growing 3D data availability, most studies simplify buildings to their 2D footprint, and when taking their height into account, they at most assume one height value per building, i.e. simple 3D. We take the first step in elevating building metrics into full/true 3D, uncovering the use of higher levels of detail, and taking into account the detailed shape of a building. We set the foundation of the new research line on 3D urban morphology by providing a comprehensive set of 3D metrics, implementing them in openly released software, generating an open dataset containing 2D and 3D metrics for 823,000 buildings in the Netherlands, and demonstrating a use case where clusters and architectural patterns are analysed through time. Our experiments suggest the added value of 3D metrics to complement existing counterparts, reducing ambiguity, and providing advanced insights. Furthermore, we provide a comparative analysis using different levels of detail of 3D building models.Urban Data Scienc

Linking Persistent Scatterers to the Built Environment Using Ray Tracing on Urban Models

Persistent scatterers (PSs) are coherent measurement points obtained from time series of satellite radar images, which are used to detect and estimate millimeter-scale displacements of the terrain or man-made structures. However, associating these measurement points with specific physical objects is not straightforward, which hampers the exploitation of the full potential of the data. We have investigated the potential for predicting the occurrence and location of PSs using generic 3-D city models and ray-tracing methods, and proposed a methodology to match PSs to the pointlike scatterers predicted using RaySAR, a ray-tracing synthetic aperture radar simulator. We also investigate the impact of the level of detail (LOD) of the city models. For our test area in Rotterdam, we find that 10% and 37% of the PSs detected in a stack of TerraSAR-X data can be matched with point scatterers identified by ray tracing using LOD1 and LOD2 models, respectively. In the LOD1 case, most matched scatterers are at street level while LOD2 allows the identification of many scatterers on the buildings. Over half of the identified scatterers easily correspond to identify double or triple-bounce scatterers. However, a significant fraction corresponds to higher bounce levels, with approximately 25% being fivefold-bounce scatterers.Mathematical Geodesy and Positionin

First 3D Cadastral Registration of Multi-level Ownerships Rights in the Netherlands

This paper reports on the first 3D cadastral registration of multi-level ownerships rights in the Netherlands, which was accomplished in March 2016. It is the result of a study that was undertaken from 2013 to 2015 to determine how insight about multi-level ownership can be provided in 3D by the cadastral registration. The solution was sought within the existing cadastral and legal framework, with the aim to build a more fundamental solution for 3D cadastral registration in the future, based on practical experience and involving the stakeholders. The 3D cadastral case presented in this paper is the new combined structure of the city hall and underground railway station in the town of Delft. The complex contains the new city hall, the railway station, the underground platforms and railway tunnel, several technical installations as well as the underground bicycle-parking. The paper presents the procedure that was followed to secure the ownership rights before the construction was completed; the translation of ownership described in the deeds into legal volumes based on the architectural drawing of the buildings; and, finally to create the 3D visualisation of the 3D rights involved and to register a deed that contains the 3D visualisation in the interactive 3D PDF format. The paper then evaluates the registration to obtain insights for an improved 3D cadastral registration. The main conclusion is that in some situations a 3D approach has important advantages for cadastral registration over a 2D approach. It requires further study on how to implement the solution in a standardised and uniform way from registration to querying and updating in the future and from an informal to a formal (i.e. legally binding) registration process

3dfier: automatic reconstruction of 3D city models

Three-dimensional city models are essential to assess the impact that environmental factors will have on citizens, because they are the input to several simulation and prediction software. Examples of such environmental factors are noise (Stoter et al., 2008), wind (Garcı́a-Sánchez et al., 2014), air pollution (Ujang et al., 2013), and temperature (Hsieh et al., 2011; Lee etal., 2013). However, those 3D models, which typically contain buildings and other man-made objects such as roads, overpasses, bridges, and trees, are in practice complex to obtain, and it is very time-consuming and tedious to reconstruct them manually. The software 3dfier addresses this issue by automating the 3D reconstruction process. It takes 2D geographical datasets (e.g., topographic datasets) that consist of polygons and “3dfies” them (as in “making them three-dimensional”). The elevation is obtained from an aerial point cloud dataset, and the semantics of the polygons is used to perform the lifting to the third dimension, so that it is realistic. The resulting 3D dataset is semantically decomposed/labelled based on the input polygons, and together they form one(many) surface(s) that aim(s) to be error-free: no self-intersections, no gaps, etc. Several output formats are supported (includingthe international standards), and the 3D city models are optimised for use in different software.Urban Data Scienc

Reference study of IFC software support: The GeoBIM benchmark 2019—Part I

Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), the buildingSMART open standard for BIM, is underused with respect to its promising potential, since, according to the experience of practitioners and researchers working with BIM, issues in the standard’s implementation and use prevent its effective use. Nevertheless, a systematic investigation of these issues has never been carried out, and there is thus insufficient evidence for tackling the problems. The GeoBIM benchmark project is aimed at finding such evidence by involving external volunteers, reporting on various aspects of the behavior of tools (geometry, semantics, georeferencing, functionalities), analyzed and described in this article. Interestingly, different IFC software programs with the same standardized data sets yield inconsistent results, with few detectable common patterns, and significant issues are found in their support of the standard, probably due to the very high complexity of the standard data model. A companion article (Part II) describes the results of the benchmark related to CityGML, the counterpart of IFC within geoinformation.Urban Data Scienc

GeoBIM benchmark: ISPRS Scientific initiative 2019 - Final report

In both research and practice, data interoperability is considered essential to support a rising number of applications that need data from different domains. Therefore, standard data formats and models are developed by standardization organizations such as Open Geospatial Consortium (for the Geo domain)and buildingSMART (for the BIM domain). However, from practical experiences, problems were noticed (standards implementation and use of standardized data). Nevertheless, it was hard to discover what the most serious issues were and what was their reason.For GeoBIM (integration of geoinformation with building information models), the CityGML standard, by Open Geospatial Consortium, and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) by buildingSMART, were considered and tested in this initiative. A sample of datasets in the two formats were provided. External volunteers were asked to import the datasets in tools supposed to support the standards, check relevant aspects for the use of data (geometry, semantics, georeferencing, functionalities), report on them, and re-export the datasets in the standard format. Other tasks were intended to describe and test georeferencing procedures for IFC models and conversion tools between CityGML and IFC.This benchmark was useful to gather best practices and data about the functioning of useful tools to manage standardized data. Common behaviors and potential problems were pointed out and the discussion about the use of standards was further pushed.Urban Data Scienc

Reference study of CityGML software support: The GeoBIM benchmark 2019—Part II

OGC CityGML is an open standard for 3D city models intended to foster interoperability and support various applications. However, through our practical experience and discussions with practitioners, we have noticed several problems related to the implementation of the standard and the use of standardized data. Nevertheless, a systematic investigation of these issues has never been carried out, and there is thus insufficient evidence for tackling the problems. The GeoBIM benchmark project is aimed at finding such evidence by involving external volunteers, reporting on various aspects of the behavior of tools (geometry, semantics, georeferencing, functionalities), analyzed and described in this article. This study explicitly pointed out the critical points embedded in the format as an evidence base for future development. A companion article (Part I) describes the results of the benchmark related to IFC, the counterpart of CityGML within building information modeling.Urban Data Scienc