State-of-the-art of 3D national mapping in 2016

Abstract

Techniques for 3D mapping are maturing. At the same time the need for 3D data is increasing. This has pushed national (and regional) mapping agencies (NMAs) to consider extending their traditional task of providing topographic data into the third dimension. To show how research results in 3D mapping obtained over the past twenty years have been adopted by practice, this paper presents the ongoing work on 3D mapping within seven NMAs, all member of the 3D Special Interest Group of European Spatial Data Research (EuroSDR). The paper shows that some NMAs are still in the initial (experimental) phase of 3D mapping, while others have already built solid databases to maintain 2.5D and 3D topographic data covering their whole country.