Design and development of 3-D urban geographical information retrieval application employing only open source instruments

Abstract

Numerous 3-D GIS are being developed today that are both commercially and freely available. A multicity web-based 3-D GIS (named as GLC3d) using open source and freely available software/packages exclusively has been developed. This paper presents the architecture, design, and overview of GLC3d. Open source tools and software’s QGIS, Cesium, and MySQL are employed to develop this application. QGIS is utilized for data preparation such as raster, vector, and subsidiary data. MySQL is utilized as database store and data population. GLC3d is based on Cesium (a JavaScript library for creating 3-D globes and 2-D maps in a web browser) and WebGL (a JavaScript API for rendering interactive 3-D computer graphics and 2-D graphics) to display 3-D Globe on the web browser. 3-D visualization for the urban/city geodata is presented on an interactive 3-D Globe. Various city information are generated and incorporated in to the 3-D WebGIS for data representation and decision making.