New Expectations: City Modeling in the Internet Age

The first part of this paper tries to give an overview over the different aspects of city modeling. After a short history on city models the paper starts with a categorization of the different “types” of city models. We try to explain the various aspects involved in the creation of a city model and the problem of maintaining a city model. Then the paper shows the example of two computer models of parts of the same European city which have been created in two different ways. The first version of this computer model tries to use as many automatic or semi automatic procedures as possible to create the model. In the paper examples of these differentprocedures are given - from the automatic creation of the buildings itself, its roofs, and the surrounding terrain to the automatic cleaning of texture photos of the façade. The second version shows a model, which has been done with just a few automatic procedures and a lot of human effort (mainly students). The paper describes the limitation of both techniques and tries to give an outlook towards the combination of these methods. We will also show the importance of internet techniques in the use and presentation of computer city models