GIS – 3D and Beyond
Alias Abdul Rahman
Department of Geoinformatics
Faculty of Geoinformation Science and Engineering
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
81310 UTM Skudai, Johor
Spatial information system or GIS deals with spatial data collection, processing, manipulation, databasing, and visualization as well as the derived information. GIS evolves from spatial data of 2D to 2.5D data type. Today, more and more advanced applications requires more functionality from such spatial system, e.g. applications in advanced urban planning, geology, oil and minerals exploration, and underground mapping including utility mapping. Present commercial systems are hardly able to offer solutions for advanced analysis like 3D spatial analysis. This paper describes some efforts towards the realization of 3D GIS and what needs to be done for next generation GIS. The paper also highlights some of the issues and problems associated in developing such advanced GIS system. The findings of research in this problem domain reveal an exciting new paradigm for next generation of GIS software and system, i.e. beyond 3D domain.
Until today, GIS remain one of the exciting tools to manipulate geospatial data. Systems offered by various vendors are growing in terms of functionalities and all of these systems are basically two-dimensional (2D) based and at the most just able to manipulate another data layer like contours or heights to the existing datasets or layers. Having this system around means we have 2.5D based GIS. Now, GIS users are getting more complex datasets and need to manipulate these datasets and generate information as we perceived in the real world, i.e. in 3D environment. This environment provides much better understanding of the geospatial pattern and phenomena, either in small or large scale areas. The aim of this paper is to examine the current GIS software developments and some research efforts towards realizing the new breed of GIS systems or software that able to provide 3D spatial information. This paper also attempts to look further on the possibility of extending the current spatial data modeling techniques to 4D and beyond, i.e. n-dimensional (nD).
Section 2 looks into the current situations or in other words the 2D GIS. Section 3 describes the 2.5D GIS while the 3D GIS will be discussed in Section 4. Section 5 discusses ubiquitous GIS. Finally, the conclusion and some further works in Section 6.
2. TWO-DIMENSIONAL (2D) GIS
In general, most of the spatial data modeling engine of any GIS software is based on spatial primitives of points, lines, and surfaces or polygons. The modeling technique is quite straight forward where the notation, convention and the formalism mechanisms are fully understood by many GIS users and software developers. It is not the intention of this paper to describe those 2D modeling formalisms since they have been solved and fully developed. Tremendous efforts have been done and the 2D systems are being utilized and implemented in various GIS applications. The systems are being well received by the GIS community as a whole.