Despite growing use of 3D city models (3DCMs) and urban digital twins (UDTs), web tools for their processing and visualization remain scarce. We present an interoperable, high-performance web application composed of a 3D tiler and a WebGPU viewer that enables scalable conversion, streaming, and rendering of urban datasets in compliance with open standards. The proposed system allows users to explore large-scale 3DCMs interactively without local installations. A showcase visualizing quality-validation results for a 3DCM demonstrates practical value. Experiments confirm that 3D Tiles 1.1 standard enables scalable data management and richer interaction, whereas WebGPU offers up to 7x better rendering performance on modern hardware. By presenting this solution and usage example, we aim to foster development of next-generation web-based 3D geospatial, digital-twin, and metaverse solutions.

This paper presents a novel methodology for the automated creation of 3D city models for Mexican cities using exclusively open data. In Mexico, while national topographic and elevation datasets exist, they lack crucial features like individual building footprints and road polygons, making it difficult to create 3D city models using the most common existing methodologies. The proposed method addresses these limitations by generating building footprints directly from high-resolution DSMs using a region-growing algorithm and deriving road polygons from the empty spaces between city blocks in the topographic data. These generated features, along with existing data for plant cover and water bodies, are then lifted to 3D using customisable rules. The methodology was implemented with Python and C++ scripts and tested in central Mexico City. Results show that the generated building footprints are often more accurate than those in global datasets (Microsoft, Google), particularly for non-rectilinear buildings, leading to recognisable city landmarks. However, the method has limitations, including missing approximately 30% of smaller buildings and occasionally misclassifying tall vegetation as buildings. Despite this, the work demonstrates the feasibility of creating useful 3D city models for the areas in Mexico with high-resolution elevation data.

BIM models of buildings are increasingly being created, and they can be used as a geometrically detailed and semantically rich source for GIS building models without the need for additional data acquisition. However, the existing level of detail (LoD) schemes for buildings are based on models created from very different sources, e.g. 2D topography and remote sensing measurements. In this paper, we propose four novel Levels of Detail (LoDs) specifically tailored for BIM-derived 3D building models. The proposed LoDs—LoDa, LoDb, LoDc, and LoDd offer abstractions that leverage BIM’s strengths while mitigating its limitations. LoDa provides a multi-surface representation of the footprint and roof, whereas LoDb, LoDc, and LoDd offer volumetric alternatives that better capture complex facades, vertical variations, and overhangs. The performance of these new LoDs was evaluated against the established LoD framework by Biljecki et al. (2016) using metrics such as area, volume, and spatial deviation. Results demonstrate that the proposed LoDs, particularly LoDa, LoDb, and the refined variants LoDc.2 and LoDd.2, can achieve a closer geometric approximation to the source model than standard LoD2.2, thereby enhancing the usability of BIM data in GIS applications like urban planning and building permit checks.

The widespread use of three-dimensional (3D) city data plays a significant role in various applications, such as mixed reality, infrastructure facility management, solar potential analysis, navigation, and so on. Ensuring high spatial and semantic quality in these endeavours is crucial to gathering proper results. Ensuring quality means verifying that the data adheres to relevant standards. Although these relevant standards are openly published, there are issues with the names of interoperability and reusability in academic studies and software development efforts. In this study, these issues are addressed using semantic web technologies. Most 3D city models (3DCMs) are treated as knowledge graphs (KG) with this approach. The main contribution of the study is a web-based interoperable tool for validation of CityGML Level of Detail 2 (LOD2) 3DCMs, which is compatible with relevant standards. Besides, an open-source 3DCM-to-KG converter and an open validation ontology are published as by-products while accomplishing the main goal. By virtue of the KG approach, the 3DCM KG becomes capable of carrying its own validation constraints, which come from the validation ontology. With these efforts, this study provides a practical, interoperable solution to improve the quality and usability of 3DCMs and validation plans, fostering consistency across applications while aligning with established standards in the field.

Building information modelling (BIM) and geoinformation are widely recognised as complementary sources of data. Whereas a BIM model can represent a single building or infrastructure project in high detail, geoinformation-based sources can represent different types of features in a large region with less detail. Integrating geoinformation and BIM is very useful in practice and constitutes an active research field—often referred to as GeoBIM. A short list of GeoBIM applications include: performing checks for the issuance of building permits using buildings (BIM) and city regulations (Geo), navigation that combines outdoor (Geo) and indoor (BIM) portions, facility management for infrastructure sites (BIM) that include the regional connections between the sites (Geo), and risk management using regional simulations (Geo) that also takes into account the impact on specific sites (BIM). [...]

This paper presents an implemented methodology to convert highly detailed building information models (BIMs) into geospatial 3D city models (Geos) at multiple levels of detail (LoDs). As BIM models contain highly detailed and complex geometries that differ significantly from city model standards, abstraction and conversion methods are required to generate usable outputs. Our study addresses this by developing a methodology that generates nine different LoDs from a single IFC input. These LoDs include both volumetric and surface-based abstractions for exterior and interior representations. The methodology involves voxelisation, filtering and simplification of surfaces, footprint derivation, storey abstraction, and interior geometry extraction. Together, these approaches allow flexible conversion tailored to specific applications, balancing accuracy, complexity, and computational efficiency. The methodology is implemented in a prototype tool named IfcEnvelopeExtractor. It automates IFC-to-CityGML/CityJSON conversion with minimal user input. The methodology was tested on a variety of models ranging from small houses to multistorey buildings. The evaluation covered geometric accuracy, semantic accuracy, and model complexity. Results show that non-volumetric abstractions and interior abstractions performed very well, producing robust and accurate results. However, the accuracy decreased for volumetric and complex abstractions, particularly at higher LoDs. Problems included missing or incorrectly trimmed surfaces, and modelling gaps and tolerance issues in the input IFC models. These limitations reveal that the quality of the input BIM models significantly affects the reliability of conversions. Overall, the methodology demonstrates that automated, flexible, and open-source solutions can effectively bridge the gap between BIM and geospatial domains, contributing to scalable GeoBIM integration in practice.

Digital Twins (DTs) are transforming construction and energy management sectors by integrating 3D surveying, monitoring, Building Performance Simulation (BPS), and Building Energy Simulation (BES) from the earliest design or retrofit stages. Moreover, dynamic thermal simulations further support energy performance assessments by modeling indoor conditions to meet comfort and efficiency targets. However, their reliability depends on accurate, standards-compliant 3D building models, which are costly to create. This research introduces a complete framework for automatically generating energy-focused Digital Twins (EDTs) directly from unstructured point clouds. Combining Deep Learning-based instance detection, Scan-to-BIM techniques, and computational geometry, the method produces simulation-ready models without manual intervention. The resulting EDTs streamline early-stage performance evaluation, enable scenario testing, and enhance decision making for energy-efficient retrofits, advancing smart-building design through predictive simulation.

The integration of 3D city models and Building Information Models (BIM) in the context of GeoBIM has gained significant attention from both academia and industry. Harmonizing the distinct characteristics and goals of these models is crucial for successful integration. In this paper, we present the development of a plugin for Autodesk Revit, a popular BIM platform, which allows for the incorporation of 3D Geo-data encoded in CityJSON. The plugin, published as open source, enables the generation of individual geometries with associated city model attributes as parameters, facilitating analysing the impact of new or changed buildings (modelled in BIM) on the environment (captured in geo-data). Challenges addressed during development include georeferencing, data format import, handling different geometry approaches, hierarchy of attributes, code optimization, user-friendliness, and enhanced visualization. The plugin contributes to the seamless integration of geo- and BIM data, enhancing interoperability and supporting informed decision-making in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction and urban domains.

De groeiende adoptie van BIM-modellen maakt het digitaal checken van bouwvergunningen mogelijk. Door ingediende BIM-modellen automatisch te checken, kunnen huidige op pdf-gebaseerde vergunningsprocessen efciënter, maar ook nauwkeuriger en transparanter worden. Bovendien kunnen ontwerpers – als de checktools vrij beschikbaar zijn – zelf al de vergunningscontroles uitvoeren die de gemeente doet na de indiening. Zo kunnen de vergunningsvoorwaarden al in de ontwerpfase worden meegenomen. Nu zijn er vaak meerdere indieningen nodig, voordat een vergunning wordt goedgekeurd. Individuele gemeenten experimenteren al met digitale vergunningverlening. Om digitale vergunningverlening generiek toepasbaar te maken, wordt momenteel het CHEK project (Change toolkit for Digital Building Permit Processing) uitgevoerd.

The role and adoption of 3D city models have been changing from a data endpoint to a centralised data source that is used for a variety of different analyses in different sectors. This change has not yet been fully completed and the transition process is still very noticeable at certain places. For example, data required for city-scale analyses are often missing, incorrect, or not stored in a standard way. A subset of these data (E.g. shell volume, shell area & footprint area) can be approximated from lower LoD shapes (LoD2.2 or lower) in the 3D city models. However, these models frequently simplify reality and therefore these approximations are not accurate. This paper proposes computing these data by voxelising Building Information Modelling (BIM) models representing the same buildings as the 3D city model. It is shown that a subset of these approximations (shell volume & footprint area) are more accurate than values computed from lower LoD shapes. Storing these data as attributes of the building models in 3D city models can improve the ease of use and the outcome of city-scale analyses. The computed values from BIM models can also be assigned to outputs of BIM to Geo conversions. This overturns the accuracy loss of the geometry caused by the conversion in which geometry is significantly generalised and simplified.

This paper introduces Property Valuation Application Domain Extension (ADE) within CityGML 3.0, aiming to integrate relevant indoor and outdoor 3D variables (cost estimation, view quality, etc.) for accurate property valuation. Current models lack the necessary features for this specific application. Leveraging IFC data for indoor elements, this ADE extends CityGML, addressing the existing gap. This paper identifies and categorizes data requirements, leading to the conceptualization and development of the model. By enriching CityGML 3.0 with IFC data, the approach introduces new features like the "Property Unit" to ensure adaptability across diverse valuation scenarios. Despite encountering data integrability challenges, we here commit to refining the model and overcoming these obstacles. A preliminary implementation using CityJSON demonstrates successful integration and paves the way for future implementation. These include developing an API platform and establishing an official repository to facilitate practical usability and scalability. This research significantly contributes to advancing property valuation processes by providing accurate valuations for stakeholders and promoting the use of 3D urban data in domain-specific extensions.

In the evolving landscape of digitalization, automating building permit processes are crucial for municipalities and other governmental bodies. Our research addresses the complexities of modeling digital building permit regulations, considering the level of the information needs (LoIN) for geometry-based regulations in four municipalities (Prague, Lisbon, Vila Nova de Gaia, and Ascoli Piceno) as case study. We propose a methodology and guidelines for geometrical building modeling, addressing challenges of integrating geoinformation with Building Information Modeling (BIM) for environmental based digital building permit (DBP) checks. This paper provides BIM-IFC geometrical interpretation choices, ensuring a seamless conversion into 3D city models. It offers insights for software companies, developers, and standardization organizations towards in implementing DBP checks, and preliminary results for a future scalable approach.

The integration of geoinformation with Building Information Models (BIM), termed GeoBIM, has garnered significant attention across academic and non-academic sectors due to its potential for analyzing the reciprocal impacts of new designs on their environment. However, achieving integration between 3D city models and BIM necessitates ensuring consistency and alignment between their respective features and specifications. Georeferencing, a fundamental task in GeoBIM, involves establishing a connection between digital models and the Earth’s surface through coordinate transformations. Despite its importance, accurate georeferencing of BIM models has often been overlooked, resulting in challenges for integrating BIM models and geographical data. To address this gap, our study proposes a novel approach to enhance the georeferencing accuracy of BIM models by integrating surveyed points, considering the varying levels of georeferencing precision applicable to Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) models. We explore the potential benefits and challenges associated with this integrated surveyed point methodology, providing insights to improve georeferencing within the GeoBIM framework.

Although level of detail (LoD) is a central concept in 3D city modelling, specifying different LoDs in an unambiguous manner is not straightforward. To resolve this, a set of frameworks have been developed. This paper evaluates the suitability of the LoD framework of (Biljecki et al. 2016) for 3D building models that have been generated directly from BIM models. The output of two BIM shell extractors are tested on how well they can be defined by the framework. It was found that although BIM-derived models can be specified by the framework to a certain degree, the framework is not fully capable to also specify lower quality models and to support all the output that may come from BIM shell extractors. This can be resolved by either addressing issues in the shell extractors’ output or in the framework itself. The results of this research can be used to improve the LoD framework and to adjust the shell extractors output to better comply with unambiguous definitions of building models at different LoDs and could be a first step to standardise the conversion of BIM models at different LoDs to be used in urban applications.

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.

To support building permit issuing with automatic digital tools, the reuse of models produced by designers would make the process quicker and more objective. However, current studies and pilots often leave a gap with respect to the models as actually provided by architects, having varying quality and content. In this study, rather than taking a top down approach, we started from the available data and made the necessary inferences, which gave the opportunity to tackle basic and common issues often preventing smooth automatic processing. Specific characteristics of the IFC models were outlined and a tool was developed to extract the necessary information from them to check representative regulations. While the case study is specific in location, regulations and input models, the type of issues encountered are a generally applicable example for automated code compliance checking. This represents a solid base for future works towards the automation of building permits issuing.

In this chapter, we start from the typical concepts from Geographic Information System (GIS): data representation, acquisition, querying and analysis. We follow with the transition from 2 to 3D GIS and describe open standards such as CityGML and CityJSON and recent advances on 3D geospatial simulations, computing and real-time GIS and Internet of Things (IoT). Then we discuss the discrepancies in information management and modelling with respect to Building Information Modelling (BIM) and the related open standard, Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). We highlight the difference between Cartesian engineering coordinate systems and geospatial coordinate reference systems, contrast the procedural geometry definitions of IFC with the explicit geometries of GIS and look at implementation mechanisms such as boundary representations and polyhedral surface models and describe the semantic Level of Detail used in CityGML. The section that follows describes relevant processes supporting integration such as georeferencing, conversion of formats using semantic and geometric approaches and linking of heterogeneous information. We also highlight interoperability challenges that stem from consistency and validity of data, by interpreting the results of a recent benchmark on interoperability of the most common involved data formats (CityGML and IFC). We close with a conclusion and perspectives on the future with case studies on geo-enabled building permit checking and geospatial artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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.

Municipalities invest a lot of time and person-hours into manual building permit checks. With the increase in computational power and the use of Building Information Models (BIM) in the building design life cycle, several municipalities are investing in automating these checks using BIM and geo-data sets. However, few examples exist of tools effectively using geo-information with BIM. In order to address this gap, a project was developed with the municipality of Rotterdam (NL). In a previous phase, a tool was implemented, able to analyse the BIM data to extract the needed information for a few representative regulations. In order to extend and improve the previously developed tool, a web-based interface is now implemented and geo-data sets are integrated to the process allowing more powerful GeoBIM analysis. Three checks using both BIM and GIS data were implemented and tested: (i) The parcel limit check evaluates if the building's footprint derived from BIM falls within the parcel limit provided from the municipalities' parcel data sets. (ii) The height check evaluates the maximum building's relative height to the road's height. Finally, (iii) the road overhang check detects neighbouring roads to the parcel and evaluates the admissible overhang over that road. This paper presents these developments, including the type of input data that is needed for the checks, the tools for the three new GeoBIM checks (parcel limit check, height check, road overhang check) and the implementation in the web-based tool.

Level of Detail (LoD) is a well known concept in 3D city models, used to designate different geometric detail that can be used in different applications. Nevertheless, multi-LoD datasets are hard to maintain and manage because of their intrinsic complexity. Versioning is a solution that aids in the storage and management of big and complex dataset, with its main goal being to facilitate the tracking of changes and collaboration. In this paper, we investigate the effects of utilising versioning and, more specifically, the concept of branches as a way to manage the evolution of multi-LoD datasets. We propose a framework according to which every LoD is stored in its own branch and can be extracted and updated independently. We tested this framework on a tile from 3D BAG, a dataset of 3D buildings for the whole of the Netherlands containing four LoDs (namely, LoD0, LoD1.2, LoD1.3 and LoD2.2). Our results suggest that there are certain benefits from this solution, such as the efficient tracking of changes for individual LoDs and the ability to extract and update the model using one LoD at a time. Nevertheless, there is a lot of complexity added to the process as a set of rules needs to be enforced when managing the model.