Tracey Stone: Beyond Visualisation

Editor's Notes

• #2: 3D visualisation models have a variety of applications in geography and urban studies: site location analysis, emergency facilities planning, design review, marketing, etc. While they are generally used to simply visualise the built environment, there are early signs of them being used as 3D interfaces to more sophisticated simulation models, for example, in the simulation of emergency response at the 2012 Olympics and security operations at football matches. A pressing problem facing many city simulations is their general inability to engage the vast majority of their users and the people whose lives they influence in a meaningful and intuitive fashion. In recent years, significant advances have been made in the development of intelligent 3D models of the built environment. Technology exists today that enables us to render visually stunning and richly detailed simulations of city environments in a manner that renders an ease of interaction and understanding that is not currently present in many simulation models. Furthermore, the addition of a third dimension to our knowledge base of city systems greatly enriches the simulation capacity of predictive models. The use of intelligent building information models (BIM) and geographic information (GI) offers much greater potential in support of city planning analysis and management applications. This paper describes how Autodesk and Ordnance Survey have initiated a collaborative project with the primary objective of building an intelligent 3D model of the City of Liverpool in order to simulate city planning and management operations.
• #3: Intro
• #4: Visual images and fly-through simulations of cities in 3D environments which are comprised of basic terrain models and block buildings have become commonplace. Tools such as Google SketchUp and the widespread application of web-based mapping have greatly demystified the generation and visualisation of 3D data.
• #5: At a more professional level, a number of municipalities across Europe have commissioned local surveys to develop urban 3D models for the primary functions of city marketing and engaging citizens in planning decisions. UKk examples include Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council and Glasgow City Council and active Digital Cities projects are also taking place in a number of cities across Europe such as Salzburg in Austria. The primary objective of these projects is to allow the public greater access to and understanding  of the development of local areas. This kind of activity can be very impressive if the primary intention is to create a strong image of a city or area in order to “deliver an emotional “wow factor” to an audience and to gain initial attention and interest in the message or visualisation being communicated.  Put Salzburg example in here The models are generally generated as a result of one-off investment projects rather than being maintained through sustained programmes that underpin a range of projects on an on-going basis.  As a result they tend to represent ‘snapshots’ in time and become rapidly out of data or become superseded by another, more attractive rendered image. With the emphasis on visualisation and aesthetic appeal, they lack: the capacity to be maintained to reflect real-world change consistent conformance to survey standards attribution and metadata which would allow the execution of geographic queries and / or derivation of statistics interoperability with other relevant geographic information and / or more detailed building information models – the ability to ‘zoom in’ to the model and explore more detailed information is normally restricted. This focus on creating visual output is very similar to the situation in the 1980s when paper maps began to evolve into ‘digital mapping’ before we began to appreciate the benefits of more analytical GIS. Good opportunity here to insert something   about the business case – ROI for the latter – should be easier to ensure payback etc …
• #6: Although the practice of city modelling for planning and management purposes is often rooted in a visual domain, significant advances have recently been made in 3D-related technologies – all with an emphasis on the information content of 3D data. The capability now exists to: Store data in standard RDBMS, such as Oracle 11 Store data in open formats, notably CityGML Integrate previously disparate technologies such as GIS and building information models (BIM) The combined impact of these developments is that we have the ability to integrate detailed BIMs with rich, data-centric 3D models to bring intelligence to what was before a picture. Analytical queries can now be run and decision-support processes can to interrogate the data at a variety from scales, from a single room to an entire city in order to generate meaningful information which can be presented in a multitude of formats. Here in this illustration you can see Ecotect looking at the impact of a new development based on shadow analysis.
• #7: Digital Cities was initially introduced by Geoff Zeiss of Autodesk at the 2008 AGI Geo community conference. It is a worldwide initiative aspiring to increase the value of ‘place’ and set a challenge for the future planning, operation and public safety of cities for the benefit of local communities. In order to develop these ideas further and to provide a demonstration platform built on data familiar and widely accessible in the UK, Autodesk and Ordnance Survey have worked together to develop an intelligent 3D model of the City of Liverpool. At its heart is the development of a prototype to integrate BIM and GI datasets and software tools with serious gaming technologies in order to simulate city planning and management operations (SAG). The model is intended to act as a focal point for discussion and debate and to enable the development of use cases and a specification for 3D data and tools in the UK.  Large scale Ordnance Survey data combined with building heights have been generated photogrammetrically and combined with aerial imagery and some detailed building models built with 3DS Max or Revit for example and modelled within LandXplorer.   This might be a useful insertion to make clear what we believe to be our intentions … and the purpose of the project? For the purpose of this exercise we considered the scenario of a managing a concert in a large venue in Liverpool. A concert of this type requires careful and specific planning and preparation relating to: the layout of the concert venue, its infrastructure and the surrounding area
• #8: the location and flow of people within and around the concert venue Inside venue with people Let’s look at this demonstration scenario in more detail. A great deal of planning is required to ensure that visitors, the structure and surrounding infrastructure will be safe both during and after the event and if a security or emergency incident were to occur, to ensure that everyone can be evacuated in a timely and safe manner. If we take a look at a BIM we can clearly establish the location of the exits and stairways both visually and additionally in other media and formats, such as a report or XML file Picture of exits and report. This is a quick, accurate and very efficient way of interrogating data about the concert venue in a meaningful way. A BIM contains a wealth of information about the building, ranging from materials used in construction to the precise measurements of features in the finished design and is therefore the most reliable and efficient way to interrogate information about city infrastructure at a highly detailed level. Typical queries relating to a large civic building which is being used as a concert venue may include: Which exits are available? Are any of these exits unsuitable to people with disabilities? What are the routes to direct people to the exits? What are the implications of power failure to lifts, lighting etc? What is the overall throughput capacity of the stairways and exits? Where should people congregate once they are clear of the building? Clever AVI needed   Planning for a concert and for emergency evacuation scenarios requires the consideration of geographic factors outside the building itself. These may The impact of sound radiation and how that might affect the surrounding community so that we know what type of prior notifications or approvals might be needed The location and height of surrounding buildings., and their potential exposure to fire or radiation risk   Is the point here that a BIM in the traditional sense provides a strong basis for asset management tasks and queries related to the physical infrastructure of the asset. The BIM in its own right is limited in its ability to act as a base for spatial analysis and the interaction of the asset with other (external) phenomena (e.g. vistor movements; spread of fire; etc etc). Sorry - words aren't great - but is this not an important point at this stage?   These need to be validated by an emergency planning officer or equivalent
• #9: So we now have our city, our building, our event and our plan but will it work? What better way to evaluate how good your emergency plans are than to play them out virtually through the use of serious gaming tools? Serious gaming has been in use for many years, for example by the Ministry of Defence. It is a safe and effective way of virtually enacting scenarios as they may happen in real life and evaluating responses to such events. This technology has evolved considerably of late and continues to do so very rapidly. The graphics being rendered in serious gaming environments look almost real but the underlying use of artificial intelligence (AI) is extremely relevant to real-life scenarios that could affect everyone. We know our land and cityscape, we know our terrain and, infrastructure and thanks to the use of BIM we know our building  By using gaming technology we can build up a series of “real” scenarios that we can act out virtually to ensure that our plans will work if an incident should occur. , We can take our BIM, put our people within it, determine their age and abilities  and using AI, create a hypothetical incident and see how different people will react, how quickly can they exit the building, which exits will be under pressure and which underutilised. Above all, they can help ensure that we have several disaster plans that will work in numerous potential instances. Serious Gaming pic and AVIs We can also take into account the wider implications such as: emergency services access, other buildings that might be affected, impact on other services such as power and water in the city and beyond (in the event of a hazard such as a chemical leak) Furthermore, we can use gaming technology to simulate the evacuationfrom the building to places of safety further afield using either public or dedicated means of transport.   Is this the piece that needs to link to the bit I highlighted in yellow above ????   Is this about managing those with special needs?
• #10: This is a demonstration of a complete use of the worlds of GIS, CAD, BIM, Gaming and AI – until now separate in nature all brought together in one model to enable planning at a range of scales within and across a city. The advantages of utilising 3D modelling over traditional 2D analysis gives you that added dimension such as shadow, accessibility and impact analysis, our vision  is that the underlying information can (and will) be maintained and used over and over again as and when required. Through open formats and connectivity standards, information stores can also be connected to other systems such as routing engines and command and control systems to ensure seamless operation. This will not happen on its own. We have moved on a long way but data still typically sits in silos and managing this disparate data can be problematic as they involve numerous different data elements, systems and authorities, many of which don’t (or won’t) talk to each other easily. . CAD and GI are not always able to interoperate. Moreover, there are still many data custodians involved in “owning” and indeed “managing” the relevant information. Nevertheless, it is possible to start bringing this information together and using it in an intelligent way as we have showcased here. Autodesk and Ordnance Survey will work to further expand on their work in this area over the coming months to engage with the user community and further understand the precise needs and requirements of with the aim of being in a position to help with the joining up of CAD, GI and BIM information, build further practical use cases and business cases for these solutions and start enabling use of these tools as common practice.   Further information is available from CD packaged up with viewer? OS to confirm or AVI?, www.autodesk.com/landxplorer , contact tracey.stone@autodesk.com.