Shell model representation as a substitute of LoD3 for 3D modeling in CityGML

The OGC standard for 3D city modeling is widely used in an increasing number of applications. It defines five consecutive Levels of Detail (LoD0 to LoD4 with increasing accuracy and structural complexity), in which LoD3 includes all exterior appearances and geometrical details and subsequently requires much storage space. A new LoD is introduced as shell model with the exterior shell of the LoD3 model and the opening objects like windows, doors as well as smaller façade objects are projected onto walls. In this paper, a user survey is presented. The results of this survey show that the shell model can give users almost the same visual impression as the LoD3 model. Furthermroe, algorithms are developed to extract the shell model from LoD3 model. Experiments show that this shell model can reduce up to 90% storage of the original LoD3 model. Therefore, on one hand it can be used as a substitute for a LoD3 model for the visualization on small displays. On the other hand, it can be treated as a sub-level of detail (SLoD3) in CityGML, since it retains almost the same amount of information but requires much less storage space.