Further Development of a QGIS Plugin for the CityGML 3D City Database

Further Development of a QGIS Plugin for the CityGML 3D City Database

Mbwanda, Tendai (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Agugiaro, G. (mentor)
León Sánchez, C.A. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Delft University of Technology

Geomatics

2023-06-20

Diversity in the use cases of semantic 3D city models today is unprecedented. A key enabler for this is the CityGML standard developed by the OGC to facilitate storing and exchanging these city models. Nevertheless, CityGML only provides object definitions which cater for a wide range of applications, making necessary the need to attach additional semantic information specific to each domain. For this reason, CityGML was designed with generic components that allow it to be extended. Alternatively, an extensibility mechanism that strengthens semantic interoperability in data exchange is the ADE. An example is the Energy ADE which augments CityGML for Urban Energy Modelling at single-building and city-wide scales. Base CityGML datasets are commonly encoded using the XML, though there are other encodings based on the JSON and SQL. The latter encoding is favourable for its associated benefits that come from the underlying DBMS. The 3DCityDB , upon which this thesis is based, is one such encoding that is open source and developed for PostgreSQL and Oracle. It has a complex structure which makes it difficult for users without extensive knowledge of CityGML, databases and SQL to access data. Hence, the 3DCityDB-Tools plugin was developed to simplify user interaction with the 3DCityDB using QGIS. However, encoding an extended CityGML dataset in the 3DCityDB adds greater complexity to a system that is already complex. In addition, 3DCityDB-Tools currently has no support for ADEs. On this backdrop, this research was initiated to investigate the extent to which ADE support can be introduced to the 3DCityDB-Tools plugin. Its server-and-client-side components are further developed to have extended layers that interact with data in 3DCityDB tables, can be managed from the GUI in QGIS and whose attributes are editable. This was achieved in an incremental and iterative process while maintaining the current architecture and user experience of the plugin. Areas identified for future development relate to the underlying database encoding of CityGML and capabilities not yet supported.

CityGML
3D City Database
Application Domain Extension
QGIS

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6786ac5c-b61d-4e17-8501-e3cf2c7a9577

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Tendai Mbwanda