Day: October 5, 2012

CyberCity 3D Launches New Buildings for Esri CityEngine

/ Matt Artz

Esri logoCyberCity 3D introduces new data features for ArcGIS and CityEngine users, including customized 3D GIS Buildings for CityEngine

CyberCity 3D, Inc., an Esri partner, today announced the introduction of its new class of 3D GIS buildings optimized for integration into Esri CityEngine, a stand-alone software product that transforms 2D GIS data into smart 3D city models.

CyberCity 3D has streamlined that workflow process by seamlessly bringing its 3D buildings into the CityEngine platform, where they can be modified as needed. This results in accurate visualization of the modeled area, including a wide range of automated measurements such as line-of-site and building footprint locations. The buildings, up to six-inches accurate, also reveal complete roof details— including slope, solar azimuth, and surface area—invaluable to solar resource profiles and hydrodynamics. The Company’s 3D buildings can be created from aerial, oblique or satellite sources.

“Combining true GIS data with real-time visualization has always been somewhat elusive,” shared CyberCity CEO Kevin DeVito. “What we are doing is building a smaller, streamlined bridge between our 3D GIS buildings and CityEngine.”

Deploying this new frontier of 3D GIS and GeoDesign gives government entities the opportunity to visually communicate with stakeholders and the public more effectively. These precise, state-of–the-art, smart 3D city models lend themselves to applications including city and campus planning, police and fire, utilities, green data, solar, and water runoff statistics.

“The utilization of CyberCity 3D GIS buildings greatly improves the workflow in CityEngine. The accurate building measurement features enhance the GIS elements, making the transition from 2D GIS to 3D GIS nearly seamless,” stated Geoff Taylor, 3D Solutions Engineer at Esri CityEngine.

[Source: Esri press release]

Evaluation of the Variation in Semantic Contents of Class Sets on Modelling Dynamics of Land-use Changes

/ Matt Artz

International Journal of Geographical Information ScienceInternational Journal of Geographical Information Science, Volume 26, Issue 4, 2012

Louisa J.M. Jansen & Tom (A.) Veldkamp

“Understanding the scale of interaction and the scale of different environmental and social processes is of paramount importance to define and explain the interaction of human–environment systems. There are three dimensions of scale: space, time and the organisational hierarchy as constructed by the observer. The latter is synonymous with the variation in semantic contents of data expressed as differences in categorisation. This dimension of scale has received little attention. In this article the relationship between the semantic contents of data and modelling dynamics is explored using two land-cover data sets for Romania, one based on the Land-Cover Classification System and the other as used in the EURURALIS study. Three levels of semantic contents of the LCCS data and the single semantic level present in the EURURALIS data are used to establish empirical relations between the land-cover class and its explaining factors. The analysis results show that the variations in semantic contents of data within one data set and between two data sets lead to different sets of spatial determinants for land cover. We did not recognise patterns when establishing the organisational hierarchy. Future policy and decision-making depend to a great extent on which organisational hierarchy is present in the data set used to formulate a policy or to make an informed decision. This would mean that if the same results would be found in other data sets using different models not only multi-scale but also multi-semantic analysis are needed in order to make meaningful predictions of spatially explicit land change.”