Supporting 3D City Modelling, Collaboration and Maintenance through an Open-Source Revision Control System

Paper in proceeding, 2010

The creation of a 3D city model is usually a very time consuming process and due to the constant development of the city it also has to be updated accordingly. One of the problems with large 3D city models is that they contain huge amount of data that has to be stored and processed when it is used. The storage and management of the models are therefore a very important issue. The management issue is often that many people are collaborating and working on the 3D city model at the same time and are located at physically different locations. In this paper we present an application for collaboration, maintenance and storing of 3D city models using an open-source subversion controlled system. It is client-server based with a file-based structure on the client side. This system is not as complex as the Oracle database and is not limited to a specific file format. We have integrated the revision control system into our VR-application but it is also possible to have external revision control using a default file manager, such as Explorer in Microsoft Windows. The system has been tested in three different Virtual Reality projects, all applied to urban planning.