Creation of a CityGML-Based 3D City Model Testbed for Energy-Related Appications

This document introduces the process for the creation of a testbed for energy applications based on a semantic 3D city model for the municipality of Rijssen-Holten in The Netherlands. The creation of this dataset requires the consolidation from multiple data sources as well as a lot of manual work so the authors can warranty as much as possible the quality of the dataset so in can be used in several use cases. The data is stored following the OGC standard CityGML v2.0 and contain the geometrical and semantical information of CityObjects from the thematic modules Building, Vegetation and Relief. This data set consolidates the open weather data from the closest weather station to the study area located in Heino in the Netherlands. We discuss the decisions taken during the manual data collection process and we present some use cases that have already consume the dataset at the time of writing this document. Urban Data Scienc

Comparison and evaluation of different gis software tools to estimate solar irradiation

In this paper, five commonly used software tools to estimate solar radiation in the urban context (GRASS GIS, ArcGIS, SimStadt, CitySim and Ladybug) are run on the same test site and are compared in terms of input data requirements, usability, and accuracy of the results. Spatial and weather data have been collected for an area located in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, in the district of Santana. The test area surrounds a weather station, for which meteorological data of the last 15 years have been collected and used as ground truth when analysing and comparing the simulation results. In terms of spatial data, raster-and vector-based models of the study area have been generated in order to comply with the different input requirements. More specifically, in the case of the vector-based tools (SimStadt, CitySim and Ladybug), a common 3D model based on CityGML and containing buildings, vegetation (trees) and terrain has been generated and used as a common urban model. The paper presents the findings and discusses the results not only from a numerical point of view, but also from the perspective of the overall usability of the software in terms of data requirements, simulation time and task automatisation. Urban Data Scienc

Findings in the calculation of solar irradiance in urban areas using several GIS tools

Current GIS software offer tools to perform the solar irradiance calculations. However, these computations based their work on data assumptions or generalisations to speed up their processing time. In this work, a method is shown to perform the calculation using very high and very low spatial resolution open datasets. The results show that there too detailed raster data like 50cm horizontal spatial resolution DSM does not improve the calculations compared to lower resolution datasets.Urban Data Scienc

Creation, Implementation and Evaluation of An Indoor Navigation System for Users with Disabilities

Indoor navigation is a complex task for people and especially for visually impaired ones. This research proposes an indoor navigation system oriented to visually impaired users, integrating the OGC IndoorGML and CityGML standards with Bluetooth Low Energy devices (BLE) by using the RSSI signal loss value and the Weighted Path Loss-techniques to calculate the user's location. This paper describes the design of the system and its implementation as a functional prototype in a mobile web application. Several operational tests were conducted to determine both the accuracy and precision of the user location. The user's positioning results show a root-mean-squared error (RMSE) of 0.88 m in a scenario with obstacles and no height difference of the BLE devices location, and a RMSE of 1.06 m in a scenario with obstacles and height difference. These results confirm the potential of the implemented prototype to grow into a fully operational system. Urban Data Scienc

Nuevo enfoque al problema de la localización óptima para equipamientos de justicia

This article shows the development of an optimal location model, designed to respond to the deficit in the supply of justice facilities in the city of Bogotá D.C. - Colombia. This optimal location model considers criteria of spatial efficiency and territorial justice, as well as normative, geographical and social aspects that limit the selection of optimal sites and uses multicriteria analysis techniques based on fuzzy logic. This model aims to be a contribution to the planning and planning processes of the urban territory and constitutes a tool for spatial analysis focused on attending to the needs of security and coexistence in the city.El presente artículo muestra el desarrollo de un modelo de localización óptima, diseñado para responder ante el déficit en la oferta de equipamientos de justicia en la ciudad de Bogotá D. C. – Colombia. Este modelo de localización óptima tiene en cuenta criterios de eficiencia espacial y justicia territorial, así como aspectos normativos, geográficos y sociales que limitan la selección de los sitios óptimos, y utiliza técnicas de análisis multicriterio basado en lógica difusa. Este modelo pretende ser un aporte a los procesos de planificación y ordenación del territorio urbano y constituye una herramienta de análisis espacial enfocado en la atención de necesidades de seguridad y convivencia en la ciudad.Urban Data Scienc

Testing the new 3D bag dataset for energy demand estimation of residential buildings

The 3D BAG v. 2.0 dataset has been recently released: it is a country-wide dataset containing all buildings in the Netherlands, modelled in multiple LoDs (LoD1.2, LoD1.3 and LoD2.2). In particular, the LoD2.2 allows differentiating between different thematic surfaces composing the building envelope. This paper describes the first steps to test and use the 3D BAG 2.0 to perform energy simulations and characterise the energy performance of the building stock. Two well-known energy simulation software packages have been tested: SimStadt and CitySim Pro. Particular care has been paid to generate a suitable, valid CityGML test dataset, located in the municipality of Rijssen-Holten in the central-eastern part of the Netherlands, that has been then used to test the energy simulation tools. Results from the simulation tools have been then stored into the 3D City Database, additionally extended to deal with the CityGML Energy ADE. The whole workflow has been checked in order to guarantee a lossless dataflow. The paper reports on the proposed workflow, the issues encountered, some solutions implemented, and what the next steps will be.Urban Data Scienc

Identification of diseases and physiological disorders in potato via multispectral drone imagery using machine learning tools

The rapid and precise detection of diseases and plant disorders is the basis for the adequate and timely design of management strategies. Currently, there are several non-destructive alternatives that allow early detection, highlighting the use of spectral cameras attached to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The objective of this research was to evaluate the use of multispectral cameras on UAVs to discriminate vascular wilt caused by Verticillium spp., (VW), waterlogging stress (WL), and an unknown alteration (UA) in commercial potato (Solanum tuberosum) variety “Diacol Capiro” crops. Plots were monitored during the crop cycle, performing the visual characterization of the diseases and disorders present. Five spectral band images were acquired using a MicaSense RedEdge spectral camera attached to a Map-T680 hexacopter drone to extract the bands and calculate the vegetation indices that were calibrated and evaluated to determine their ability to discriminate between diseased and healthy plants based on a generalized linear model (GLM) and Kappa index. Additionally, the supervised random forest classification method was implemented, optimized, and evaluated using the accuracy, area under receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC-AUC), kappa index, and inference error based on k-fold cross-validation. After algorithms optimization our results show a classifier accuracy, kappa and ROC-AUC values to VW, WL and UA between 73.5–82.5%, 0.56–0.71, 0.97–0.98, and 35 37.5–51.9%, 0.07–0.06, and 0.88–0.94 for plots 1 and 2, respectively. This study reports an approach to the use of multispectral cameras attached to UAVs as a tool with potential for the detection of diseases and physiological disorders in commercial potato crops.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Urban Data Scienc

Development and Testing of the CityJSON Energy Extension for Space heating Demand Calculation

3D city models are frequently used to acquire and store energy-related information of buildings for energy applications. In this context, CityGML is the most common data model, and the Energy ADE, one of its most complex extensions, provides a systematic way of storing detailed energy-related data in XML format. Contrarily, even though CityGML's JSON-based encoding, CityJSON, has an extension mechanism, an energy-related CityJSON Extension is missing. This paper, therefore, presents the first results of the development of a CityJSON Energy Extension and space heating demand calculation is utilized as the use case. The simplified version of the Energy ADE, called the Energy ADE KIT profile, is used to create a semi-direct translation to the CityJSON Energy Extension. This Extension is then validated through the official validator of CityJSON and the use case, and improvements are made considering the validation results. The space heating demand is calculated according to the Dutch standard NTA 8800 for a subset of Rijssen-Holten in the Netherlands although the solar gains calculation requires further review. The results show that the final CityJSON Energy Extension provides full support for space heating demand calculations based on the NTA 8800 and eliminates the deep hierarchical structure of the Energy ADE. A comparison on CityJSON file sizes shows a 25.2 MB increase after the required input data is stored in a CityJSON + Energy Extension file, which is not significant considering the high amount of data stored in the file. Overall, this paper shows that the CityJSON Energy Extension could provide an easy-to-use alternative to the CityGML Energy ADE.Urban Data Scienc

Volume comparison of automatically reconstructed multi-lod building models for urban planning applications

3D city models are playing a growing role worldwide as sources of integrated information upon which different urban applications are developed. In the context of urban planning and design, semantic 3D city models can provide plenty of qualitative and quantitative information about the urban context and of the area(s) to be transformed. This paper takes inspiration and continues a work recently published in which several design parameters and Key Performance Indicators are computed from a semantic 3D city model, and later used in a GIS-supported urban design process to develop a new area. As many of such parameters are derived from the gross volume of the building stock, this paper investigates whether and to which extent different building stock models might affect the estimation of the gross volume. The study is carried out in anticipation of the upcoming LoD2-based, country-wide model of the Netherlands that is being finalised by our team. At the same time, the paper investigates whether and which information can be obtained regarding the quality of the LoD2 model from a comparison with the LoD1 one, with a focus on volume calculation.Urban Data Scienc

On the Influence of Party Walls for Urban Energy Modelling

In the last 15 years semantic 3D city models have seen a steady growth in terms of creation and adoption. Many cities world-wide have now at least one city model which can be used for several applications. Energy- and sustainability-related topics are among those that have experienced a noteworthy increase of interest from the Geomatics community. 3D city models have become a steady component of Urban Energy Modelling, in which bottom-up approaches are developed to assess, for example, the energy efficiency of the building stock and to explore different scenarios of building refurbishment. Within this context, this paper focuses on investigating how much party walls can contribute to the energy demand estimation of a building. For this reason, two approaches to compute party walls are described and compared. The nature and the magnitude of their differences, as well as their possible impact on downstream applications, are considered in order to shed light on whether discrepancies in the amount of computed party wall area might lead to significant differences in terms energy demand of the residential building stock. The case study area is located in the Netherlands and encompasses the municipality of Rijssen-Holten. Urban Data Scienc