CityGML-Urban Planning ADE Ideathon will be held in Japan

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), in collaboration with the Cabinet Office of Japan, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) of Japan, and the Urban Structure Visualization Promotion Organization (USVPO), are pleased to announce the CityGML-Urban Planning ADE Ideathon held across two two-day meetings in Japan.

Focused on local Japanese municipalities using OGC CityGML, the events will run from October 3 to October 4, 2019, in Chino City, Nagano Prefecture, and from February 12 to February 14, 2020, in Tokyo. The events will include participants from the government, academic, and private sectors.

In Japan, continuous population decline and aging pose major urban structure challenges. To attract high quality investment for urban regeneration, the “i-Urban Renovation” database is being developed.

In order to raise productivity and investment quality in urban regeneration, a database containing comprehensive, easy-to-use data that facilitates spatial and numerical understanding to provide a seamless picture of urban structure needs to be developed – both from a general, nation-wide perspective and from that of individual local situations. At the same time, it is also important to build a framework in which the data created is accumulated as urban capital.

The Cabinet Office aims to promote the use of large amounts of data held by local municipalities, reduce the data creation costs, ensure versatility and expandability, guarantee compliance with international standards, and ensure compatibility with interactive tools, among other objectives. For these purposes, on May 7, 2019 the Cabinet Office announced the “i-Urban Renovation” technical specifications (i-UR 1.0), which defines description methods for urban regeneration data.

In the context of defining the “i-Urban Renovation Data” encoding method for these technical specifications, the City Geography Markup Language (CityGML), first published in 2008 by OGC, has been expanded to align with existing related data specifications and improve data flow. This aims to contribute to urban regeneration by combining i-Urban Renovation Data with various other types of geospatial information.

CityGML provides an extension mechanism called Application Domain Extension (ADE). When using this mechanism, extensions are determined by ADE rules.

The Application Domain Extension (ADE) is a built-in mechanism of CityGML to augment its data model with additional concepts required by particular use cases, and many ADEs have been developed for various fields. For example, CityGML Utility Network ADE from the Technical University of Munich provides a means to represent supply and disposal infrastructure through CityGML.

The concept of “i-Urban Renovation” can be applied in various countries and cities facing urban challenges. Therefore, the general-purpose data specification of the “i-Urban Renovation Data” encoding specifications is meant to be applied not only in Japan but also in other countries. This general-purpose data specification is called the “Data Encoding Specification of i-Urban Renovation and Planning – Urban Planning ADE.”

In this Ideathon, we will share knowledge with staff from local government, and discuss expanding the applications of CityGML and Urban Planning ADE in Japan, as well as the demand for updated versions in the future.

At the 1st meeting, participants will discuss the use and dissemination of CityGML in Japan, the utilization strategies of Urban Planning ADE, and directions they wish to take with the next versions.

At the 2nd meeting, which will gather local government staff, OGC members will deliver a talk on expanding the uses of CityGML in Japan. In addition, participants of the 1st Ideathon session may report on use cases of CityGML and the Urban Planning ADE.