Virtual 3D city models are a spatial representation of the relevant entities within cities. 3D city models have traditionally been used for many application areas like urban planning, navigation, tourism, disaster management, training simulation and gaming. For most of these application areas the 3D visualization is of highest importance. In this project, a semantic 3D city model of New York City (NYC) has been created based on datasets provided in the NYC Open Data Portal. The resulting 3D city model is represented in a homogenized and integrated way using the international standard CityGML of the Open Geospatial Consortium. It comprises all NYC buildings, land parcels, street space objects, parks, the digital terrain model, and water bodies – all with 3D geometries. The NYC CityGML model has been exported to KML using 3DCityDB and can be visualized and exported using our new open source 3D Webclient which extends the Cesium Virtual Globe.
The project was carried out in the context of thee master theses within the master's program Geodesy and Geoinformation at TUM. Phase 1 provided the basis of the city model, comprising all NYC buildings, land parcels, roads, parks, the digital terrain model, and water bodies in LoD1. Building on this foundation, the city model was further developed in phase 2, focusing on the representation of street space objects such as roadbeds, sidewalks or plazas as well as on new building models in LoD2.