Modeling the Appearance and Behavior of Urban Spaces

Abstract

Urban spaces consist of a complex collection of buildings, parcels, blocks and neighborhoods interconnected by streets. Accurately modeling both the appearance and the behavior of dense urban spaces is a significant challenge. The recent surge in urban data and its availability via the Internet (e.g., Google Earth/Maps, Microsoft Visual Earth) has fomented a significant amount of research in computer graphics and in a number of applications in urban planning, emergency management, and visualization. In this state-of-the-art report, we seek to provide an overview of methods spanning computer graphics and related fields involved in this goal. Our paper reports the most prominent methods in urban modeling and rendering, urban visualization, and urban simulation models. A reader will be well versed in the key problems and current solution methods.