Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
schemas against three simulated scenarios about discovering specific types of 3D
geospatial datasets. The preliminary results show that our proposal constitutes
six new 3D metadata concepts as well as adjusting several others regarding 3D
geospatial data.
Keywords
Metadata • 3D geospatial models • 3D data discovery • Canadian
geospatial data infrastructure (CGDI) • Geo-portals
1 Introduction
3D geospatial models have become popular receiving much attention, curiosity,
and interest. Such models are produced and employed for several applications
such as urbanism (Oude Elberink et al.
2013
; Sheppard and Cizek
2009
), disaster
management (Metral et al.
2012
), geology (Jones et al.
2009
; Pouliot et al.
2008
),
3D cadaster (van Oosterom
2013
; Pouliot et al.
2011
), virtual globes with urban
data (e.g. Google Earth, Bing Map), and mobile augmented reality (Zamyadi et al.
2013
; Thomas et al.
2011
). One may also refer to several free 3D modeling tools
such as FreeCAD (
freecadweb.org
) and SketchUp (
sketchup.com
)
on desktop, and
3DTin (
3dtin.com
) and Tinkercad (
tinkercad.com
) on web platforms.
The interested citizens, college students, experts, consulting agencies, and offi-
cials, all together, expand the number and diversity of 3D geospatial models (Uden
and Zipf
2013
; Fischer
2012
; Jones et al.
2013
; Zlatanova et al.
2010
). The pro-
ducers publish their 3D geospatial models for open use, advertising, or sale. The
user communities seek 3D geospatial models to avoid or reduce repeating produc-
tion costs and to preserve more resources for their main objectives like simulations
and analysis (Pu et al.
2007
; Czerwinski et al.
2006
). In mass dissemination, like
in Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI), everyone can publish 3D geospatial models
and everyone can come to discover them. Eventually, the users desire to discover
the 3D geospatial models they need at spending less time and cost on finding the
most appropriate resources (Czerwinski et al.
2006
).
Inquiring “3D City Model New York” in Google search engine, redirects
the users to more than 1,300 datasets with various content and royalties on the
first result pages. These datasets are published in various portals and websites
(e.g. Harvard University city models, Google 3D model collections, and 3dcad-
browser, turbosquid, and vizmod portals). One way to narrow the search is to use
other specific keywords. However, this increases the risk to overlook several other
resources. For example, replacing “City” with “GIS” (for Geographic Information
Systems) drops the found results by the rate of 99 % (this rate may change in time.
However, our frequent observations have not shown a considerable change yet). The
dropped resources are mainly Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided
Manufacturing (CAM), and Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) products which
can be converted to GIS-friendly formats and databases. Another way is to check
the respective portals one by one. Now, to thoroughly learn about the available 3D
