Integrated 3D visualisation for urban surface and underground data – DeepCity3D

Europe cities and their hinterlands are major foci of business, heritage, culture and development. Many have geological issues that inhibit economic and sustainable development. Moreover, underneath today's city streets exists a labyrinth of caves, quarries and lifelines (sewer, gas, electric and telecommunication lines). The knowledge about the location of these buried infrastructures represents crucial information for a continuous utility management, including quick response to emergencies, efficient repair working and planned extensions of existing networks. The 3D visualisation of all buried utilities as well as geoscientific information is technically feasible. However, an application integrating and visualising the subsoil components into a city model (i.e. buried networks and geoscientific information like geological models, drill-holes, hydrogeological models ...) does not yet exist. Such tools may prove to be very useful in the management of underground related issues (e.g. maintenance of networks, underground water levels, mechanical properties of soils, presence of cavities, etc), which is at the moment less intuitive due to the lack of underground information in City Models. DeepCity3D project intends to develop application-adaptive 3D visualisation tools that integrate for the first time underground data and City models (provided in standardised formats) with advanced functionalities to support decision making in Urban Planning, Construction Companies, Insurance Companies, Architects, Environmental Protection.