Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
of the studied portals is very few like two portals in Evans (
2012
) and one single
portal in Boeykens and Bogani (
2008
). Expanding the scope of such investigation
to a larger number of sharing portals produces a broader image of the trends and
helps with integrating the 3D metadata requirements which have been identified
from the literature. Therefore, a new inventory is carried out regarding multiple
geo-portals and commercial websites, targeting the metadata resources they offer
for publishing and discovery 3D geospatial datasets.
The inventory intends to demonstrate how the actual practitioners encounter
metadata upon sharing 3D geospatial models. Therefore, the inventory targets
were chosen from the geo-portals and commercial catalogues which have diverse
addressees in North America and present the 3D geospatial resources which are
significant in number or content. In this regard, eight inventory targets were cho-
sen from seven governing bodies as listed here:
• CGDI: Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Discovery Portal permits
Canadian providers to present their free and commercial geospatial resources;
assorting more than 300 records under “Elevation and Derived Product” cate-
gory (
geodiscover.cgdi.ca
)
.
• QCOD: Quebec City Open Data publishes free geospatial datasets from the
municipal departments; currently hosting 48 datasets including three civil 3D
blue-prints (
donnees.ville.quebec.qc.ca
)
• LID: Canada LiDAR Metadata Repository gathers and publishes the metadata
of airborne LiDAR projects across Canada; thirteen of them in Quebec province
• MRN: Quebec's Ministry of Natural Resources (Department of Mines) exhibits
3D geological models of four distinct mining camps in an exclusive webpage
• CBW: 3D CAD Browser sharing portal permits freelancers to exhibit CGI,
CAD, and CAM 3D models; currently hosting more than 150 models from US
and Canada under “3D Cities/Cityscapes” and “3D Maps/Landscapes” catego-
ries (
3dcadbrowser.com
)
• TRL: Trimble (Google) 3D Warehouse permits SketchUp users to share 3D
models; currently hosting more than 380 models in Google Earth 3D Building
layer tagged in Canada.
• CTY1: CyberCity3D 3D-GIS City Library exhibits 61 US and 5 non-US city
models produced by CyberCity3D Inc. (ESRI partner) for 3D GIS environments
(
cybercity3d.com
)
.
• CTY2: CyberCity3D 3D-CAD Building Library exhibits 20 US and 1 non-US
city models produced by CyberCity3D Inc. (Autodesk partner) for 3D CAD
environments (
cybercity3d.com
)
.
Some of the mentioned geo-portals like CGDI and QCOD have not been established
aiming at publishing 3D geospatial models although they currently are hosts to a
few to dozens of 3D datasets. But, their open policy toward publishing various types
of geospatial resources as well as their national or local importance put them among
the favorable candidates for the anticipated market of 3D geospatial models.
