Leveraging knowledge graphs and semantic web technologies for validating 3D city models

Abstract

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.