Object oriented roads in modelmaps

Modelmaps consist of features which can be observed or perceived in our daily life (Kjems and Kolar 2005). One of the major features, which apparently still are difficult to represent in an adequate way, are roads. Despite their visual significance and spatial extent, it is difficult to represent roads as objects in databases and to identify them as such in modelmaps. In most 3D systems roads are represented through textures like ortho-photos and not as feature-based geometry. This paper suggests a method to represent roads in 3D using an object oriented approach. 3D here means that road objects literally are cut into the terrain and represented as B-rep surface geometry. The data used for this approach are taken from the same data sets as used by car navigation systems. The methods described can be used in general, but parts of the approach are related to the GRIFINOR platform (http://www.grifinor.net) and developed particularly for that (Bodum, Kjems et al. 2005) (Kolar 2006).