This course provides a detailed description of the main ways in which the built environment is modelled in three dimensions, covering material from low-level data structures for generic 3D data to high-level semantic data models for cities.
At the end of the course, students should be able to:
1. compare different modelling approaches, outline their relative merits and drawbacks, and choose an appropriate approach for a given use case;
2. interpret topological properties like 2-manifoldness, and execute solutions that use these properties to store 3D models;
3. implement several different data structures for the storage of 3D models;
4. outline the characteristics of the main semantic open data models used in GIS (CityGML-CityJSON) and BIM (IFC), and to manipulate such models at a low level;
5. execute analyses based on a 3D city model and check their result.
