Leveraging image-based 3D portrayal technology for web-based 3D GIS implementation
Boon Heng Beh et al.
Geospatial portal is a proven communication medium to disseminate geospatial information among government agencies, government to business for public consumption. At present, most geoportals are meant for 2D geospatial information and relatively few geoportals are available for 3D geospatial information. Nevertheless, users always aim to publish their 3D geospatial information such as 3D city model etc via the web, at least for visualization and query purposes. Hence, this paper delineates an approach of implementing web-based 3D GIS by leveraging imagebased 3D portrayal technology. Through this technology, high-quality images of complex 3D geospatial information are rendered from the dedicated 3D server system. The 3D GIS geoportal is implemented with a C.O.T.S web-GIS engine, namely Bentley Geo Web Publisher, in order to publish a 3D city model online for visualization, navigation, query and information retrieval purposes. The 3D city model is a combination of 3d model and GIS database of Quebec City. At the client-end, users access the geoportal via a web browser. The image-based 3D portrayal technology, architecture and operation of the geoportal are described in this paper. The server-side image rendering process with the image portrayal technology is discussed as well. Besides that, this paper presents several beneficial aspects of implementing webbased 3D GIS with image-based 3D portrayal technology. Finally, the results from an actual model and associated conclusion are also provided.
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