Abstract
Modeling cities, and urban spaces in general, is a daring task for computer graphics, computer vision, and visualization. Understanding, describing, and modeling the geometry and behavior of cities are significant challenges that ultimately benefit urban planning and simulation, mapping and visualization, emergency response, and entertainment. In this paper, we have collected and organized research which addresses this multidisciplinary challenge. In particular, we divide research in modeling cities and urban spaces into the areas of geometrical modeling and of behavioral modeling. The first area overlaps significantly with computer graphics and computer vision—our focus is on algorithms that produce intricate geometry quickly from a compact set of specifications (i.e., procedural modeling). The second area of behavioral modeling centers on understanding the underlying socioeconomic, meteorological, and resource consumption/waste production processes occurring within an urban space. Research in urban modeling, even from a computer graphics perspective, must tie the two areas of geometric and behavioral modeling together in order to ensure that useful 3D modeling techniques are developed and are placed within their needed context. In addition, we discuss the growing trend of inverse procedural modeling and some sample urban applications.
Highlights
Using computer graphics and interactive modeling and rendering systems to assist in the design, visualization, and simulation of complex 3D city models is of significant interest to a wide variety of stakeholders
The goal of behavioral modeling is understanding the underlying socioeconomic, meteorological, and resource consumption/waste production processes occurring within an urban space [17]
Afterwards, we focus on methods which produce urban layouts, consisting mostly of road networks and parcel geometries
Summary
Understanding, describing, and modeling the geometry (e.g., creating 2D/3D geometric models) and behavior (e.g., simulating urban development over time) of cities are of significant challenge that benefits the aforementioned applications. A huge number of ground-level imagery exist that is being captured by Google, Microsoft, Navtec and other companies and by private citizens (e.g., tourists) This last source of data has already fomented research to produce animations and 3D reconstructions of distant urban locations using large photo collections extracted from the web (e.g., 100,000+ pictures can be found of a single popular location) [13,14,15]. Even from a computer graphics perspective, must tie together the two areas of geometric and behavioral modeling in order to ensure that useful 3D modeling techniques are developed and are placed within their needed context. Their utility is to assist decision making of urban policies in current and future urban areas (e.g., [18, 19])
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