Press release

OGC(R) Requests Comments on CityGML Encoding Standard

Wayland, Mass., February 19, 2008 – The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is requesting public comment on the candidate CityGML Encoding Standard.CityGML is a Geography Markup Language 3 (GML3) application schema for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models.CityGML is a common information model for the representation of 3D urban objects.The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 345 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards.OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled.

Wayland, Mass., February 19, 2008 – The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is requesting public comment on the candidate CityGML Encoding Standard. CityGML is a Geography Markup Language 3 (GML3) application schema for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models.

CityGML is a common information model for the representation of 3D urban objects. It defines the classes and relations for the most relevant topographic objects in cities and regional models with respect to their geometrical, topological, semantical and appearance properties. Included are generalization hierarchies between thematic classes, aggregations, relations between objects, and spatial properties. This thematic information goes beyond graphic exchange formats and allows users to employ virtual 3D city models for sophisticated analysis tasks in different application domains such as simulations, urban data mining, facility management, and thematic inquiries.

Activities that would benefit from the richness of CityGML data include city planning, real estate, insurance, architectural design, environmental simulation, mobile telecommunication, disaster management, homeland security, facilities management, vehicle and pedestrian navigation, training simulators and others. CityGML will play an important role in the use of Building Information Models (BIM) to improve interoperability among the information systems used in the many domains of activity that involve design, construction, ownership and operation of buildings and capital projects.

The RFC can be downloaded from http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/47. Comments are due by March 20, 2008.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 345 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® Standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/.