The Role of Geospatial Technologies in Building Smarter Cities

Abstract

This thesis reviews the smart city concept in relation to geospatial information and technologies. It aims to do so by defining the ideal smart city information system and comparing this with a prototype geospatial information model. Also, an overview is given of geospatial applications in smart city development. As cities are spatial entities, geography and geospatial technologies can play a major role in enabling the smart city concept (Percivall et al., 2015). Geographic Information Systems (GIS), being ICT technology, can therefore serve as centralized information systems which integrate all aspects of processes in cities that wish to be ‘smart’. Smart city approaches, technologies and trends, standards, data, architecture and applications are described in Chapter 2. To come to a definition of the ideal smart city information system and what its requirements are it is proposed that it should be able to measure indicators of smartness, as is proposed in multiple approaches. This requires a stable information architecture which is interoperable, functional, extensible, secure, and transferable and which should be able to incorporate different technologies using (open) smart city standards. If this is the case it can serve as an ideal basis for the development of specific applications. Open standards are needed for interoperability between systems, but also for efficiency, application innovations and cost effectiveness. Smart cities require a framework of trusted/authoritative data; for example, core reference data in 2D and 3D (i.e. topography), identifiers and addressing, smart infrastructure (BIM, smart grid), and sensor feeds (Percivall, 2015). These are types of spatial information that are crucial for building smarter cities. Such a framework, based on spatial information, needs a data integration platform, which is provided, in part, by the OGC City Geography Markup Language (CityGML). Chapter 3 describes spatial information, what it is, how it viewed upon from a smart city perspective, what GISs can do, what an SDI is, which (geo-)standards there are (in particular CityGML), what techniques exist and what applications can be built. From this it is argued that 3D geo-information and data is particularly useful for buildings smarter cities. This is then being tested with the development and construction of a prototype 3D Virtual District Model of a future scenario in a case study for the Smart Sustainable Districts project in Utrecht. This 3D city model can serve as part of a Smart District Data Infrastructure and be used as ‘backbone’ for further smart city development. The method or design scheme for this can be copied to other districts or areas. The proposed prototype is a showcase of how the first steps towards an integrated CityGML based 3D city model can be taken. The potential use of 3D city models is great and there is a lot to win in building smarter cities. Geospatial information and technologies must become a greater role in this.