Extending 3D city models with legal information

3D city models represent existing physical objects and their topological and functional relations. In everyday life the rights and responsibilities connected to these objects, primarily legally defined rights and obligations but also other socially and culturally established rights, are of importance. The rights and obligations are defined in various laws and it is often difficult to identify the rules applicable for a certain case. The existing 2D cadastres show civil law rights and obligations and plans to extend them to provide information about public law restrictions for land use are in several countries under way. It is tempting to design extensions to the 3D city models to provide information about legal rights in 3D. The paper analyses the different types of information that are needed to reduce conflicts and to facilitate decisions about land use. We identify the role 3D city models augmented with planning information in 3D can play, but do not advocate a general conversion from 2D to 3D for the legal cadastre. Space is not anisotropic and the up/down dimension is practically very different from the two dimensional plane – this difference must be respected when designing spatial information systems. The conclusions are: (1) continue the current regime for ownership of apartments, which is not ownership of a 3D volume, but co-ownership of a building with exclusive use of some rooms; such exclusive use rights could be shown in a 3D city model; (2) ownership of 3D volumes for complex and unusual building situations can be reported in a 3D city model, but are not required everywhere; (3) indicate restrictions for land use and building in 3D city models, with links to the legal sources