A Collaborative Environment for Urban Landscape Simulation

Abstract

Digital maps are very commonly used in the analysis, administration and representation of urban spaces. Despite the degree of information they can provide, they still pose some difficulties in decision making due to the three-dimensional nature of such ever-changing settings. This paper presents a collaborative solution for large virtual environment recreation aimed at urban landscape simulation. By providing an extensive interactive three-dimensional virtualization of a real-world city, multiple users may contribute with additional data, to either improve the model fidelity or to preview the impact of certain urban changes. This is achieved by employing procedural modeling methods to generate a basic three-dimensional city model from real-world data and a set of parameters, which can later be refined through human intervention. A multi-user simulation platform has been conceived, allowing the collaborative management of the model data, as well as the simulation of possible urban landscape changes, introducing therefore more advanced analysis and representation features to study and discuss the impact of certain decisions on the urban landscape.