A Concept of Quality Management of 3D City Models Supporting Application-Specific Requirements

In this paper, a novel approach to specify application-specific requirements for 3D City Models is proposed. A modular set of geometric and semantic requirements that are based on the OGC CityGML Quality Interoperability Experiment (Coors and Wagner in Fernerkundung und Geoinformation eV 24:288–295, 2015) has been specified. Depending on the purpose of the model, not all requirements are mandatory. For example, if the model is used for visualization only, solid geometry is not required. However, if the same model should be used for analytic purpose such as heating demand simulation, solid geometry is mandatory. A formal definition of a validation plan is proposed in this paper to specify the application-specific set of requirements. This gives the city model manufacturers the possibility to provide proof that their model is usable in certain applications and can certify a certain level of quality. The concept is evaluated with the definition of a validation plan for heating demand simulation. It has been successfully implemented using the Software CityDoctor and SimStadt.