Given a large repository of geotagged imagery, we seek to automatically find visual elements, e. g. windows, balconies, and street signs, that are most distinctive for a certain geo-spatial area, for example the city of Paris. This is a tremendously difficult task as the visual features distinguishing architectural elements of different places can be very subtle. In addition, we face a hard search problem: given all possible patches in all images, which of them are both frequently occurring and geographically informative? To address these issues, we propose to use a discriminative clustering approach able to take into account the weak geographic supervision. We show that geographically representative image elements can be discovered automatically from Google Street View imagery in a discriminative manner. We demonstrate that these elements are visually interpretable and perceptually geo-informative. The discovered visual elements can also support a variety of computational geography tasks, such as mapping architectural correspondences and influences within and across cities, finding representative elements at different geo-spatial scales, and geographically-informed image retrieval.

/pdf/what-makes-paris-look-like-paris-26y4256018.pdf

What makes Paris look like Paris

The importance of landscape and heritage recording and documentation with optical remote sensing sensors is well recognized at international level. The continuous development of new sensors, data capture methodologies and multi-resolution 3D representations, contributes significantly to the digital 3D documentation, mapping, conservation and representation of landscapes and heritages and to the growth of research in this field. This article reviews the actual optical 3D measurement sensors and 3D modeling techniques, with their limitations and potentialities, requirements and specifications. Examples of 3D surveying and modeling of heritage sites and objects are also shown throughout the paper.

https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/6/1104/pdf

Heritage Recording and 3D Modeling with Photogrammetry and 3D Scanning

The focus of this survey is on research in applying evolutionary and other metaheuristic search algorithms to automatically generating content for games, both digital and nondigital (such as board games). The term search-based procedural content generation is proposed as the name for this emerging field, which at present is growing quickly. A taxonomy for procedural content generation is devised, centering on what kind of content is generated, how the content is represented and how the quality/fitness of the content is evaluated; search-based procedural content generation in particular is situated within this taxonomy. This article also contains a survey of all published papers known to the authors in which game content is generated through search or optimisation, and ends with an overview of important open research problems.

http://julian.togelius.com/Togelius2011Searchbased.pdf

Search-Based Procedural Content Generation: A Taxonomy and Survey

In the last decades, 3D city models appear to have been predominantly used for visualisation; however, today they are being increasingly employed in a number of domains and for a large range of tasks beyond visualisation. In this paper, we seek to understand and document the state of the art regarding the utilisation of 3D city models across multiple domains based on a comprehensive literature study including hundreds of research papers, technical reports and online resources. A challenge in a study such as ours is that the ways in which 3D city models are used cannot be readily listed due to fuzziness, terminological ambiguity, unclear added-value of 3D geoinformation in some instances, and absence of technical information. To address this challenge, we delineate a hierarchical terminology (spatial operations, use cases, applications), and develop a theoretical reasoning to segment and categorise the diverse uses of 3D city models. Following this framework, we provide a list of identified use cases of 3D city models (with a description of each), and their applications. Our study demonstrates that 3D city models are employed in at least 29 use cases that are a part of more than 100 applications. The classified inventory could be useful for scientists as well as stakeholders in the geospatial industry, such as companies and national mapping agencies, as it may serve as a reference document to better position their operations, design product portfolios, and to better understand the market.

/pdf/applications-of-3d-city-models-state-of-the-art-review-3yewcl5e4i.pdf

Applications of 3D City Models: State of the Art Review

CityGML is the international standard of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for the representation and exchange of 3D city models It defines the three-dimensional geometry, topology, semantics and appearance of the most relevant topographic objects in urban or regional contexts These definitions are provided in different, well-defined Levels-of-Detail (multiresolution model) The focus of CityGML is on the semantical aspects of 3D city models, its structures, taxonomies and aggregations, allowing users to employ virtual 3D city models for advanced analysis and visualization tasks in a variety of application domains such as urban planning, indoor/outdoor pedestrian navigation, environmental simulations, cultural heritage, or facility management This is in contrast to purely geometrical/graphical models such as KML, VRML, or X3D, which do not provide sufficient semantics CityGML is based on the Geography Markup Language (GML), which provides a standardized geometry model Due to this model and its well-defined semantics and structures, CityGML facilitates interoperable data exchange in the context of geo web services and spatial data infrastructures Since its standardization in 2008, CityGML has become used on a worldwide scale: tools from notable companies in the geospatial field provide CityGML interfaces Many applications and projects use this standard CityGML is also having a strong impact on science: numerous approaches use CityGML, particularly its semantics, for disaster management, emergency responses, or energy-related applications as well as for visualizations, or they contribute to CityGML, improving its consistency and validity, or use CityGML, particularly its different Levels-of-Detail, as a source or target for generalizations This paper gives an overview of CityGML, its underlying concepts, its Levels-of-Detail, how to extend it, its applications, its likely future development, and the role it plays in scientific research Furthermore, its relationship to other standards from the fields of computer graphics and computer-aided architectural design and to the prospective INSPIRE model are discussed, as well as the impact CityGML has and is having on the software industry, on applications of 3D city models, and on science generally

CityGML – Interoperable semantic 3D city models

CGA shape, a novel shape grammar for the procedural modeling of CG architecture, produces building shells with high visual quality and geometric detail. It produces extensive architectural models for computer games and movies, at low cost. Context sensitive shape rules allow the user to specify interactions between the entities of the hierarchical shape descriptions. Selected examples demonstrate solutions to previously unsolved modeling problems, especially to consistent mass modeling with volumetric shapes of arbitrary orientation. CGA shape is shown to efficiently generate massive urban models with unprecedented level of detail, with the virtual rebuilding of the archaeological site of Pompeii as a case in point.

/pdf/procedural-modeling-of-buildings-3f2rlptuug.pdf

Procedural modeling of buildings

Rome Reborn is a virtual reconstruction of the entire city of ancient Rome at the height of its urban development in 320 AD. The model consists of two kinds of digital reconstructions: Class I elements (whose position, identification, and design are known with great accuracy); and Class II elements (whose building type and location are known only in a general way). Within the Aurelian walls, there are more than 7000 buildings. Of these, ca. 250 fall into Class I, and the rest into Class II. By their very nature, Class I elements can be digitally modeled with a high level of detail and confidence; Class II elements cannot. The challenge in modeling an entire city such as ancient Rome (and, by extension, many other sites known from incomplete archaeological data) is to harmonize the mode of representation of these two classes of buildings. This paper describes how we utilized procedural and parametric modeling techniques to create visually compelling and detailed models of the Class II elements of the digital model of ancient Rome. Procedural modeling methods made the modeling process very efficient without sacrificing detail or quality. Furthermore, the flexibility of the approach helps to quickly change and regenerate the model as new scholarship or discoveries warrant.

/pdf/rome-reborn-2-0-a-case-study-of-virtual-city-reconstruction-1cx1xra6rv.pdf

Rome Reborn 2.0: A Case Study of Virtual City Reconstruction Using Procedural Modeling Techniques

The creation of 3D models of ancient sites has often been focused on their major monuments only. This is logical, given the high costs of traditional 3D modeling. Thus, to efficiently reconstruct entire sites like cities, a large number of domestic buildings and workshops need to be generated automatically. Their appearance should follow the aesthetic and statutory architectural rules of the corresponding epoch. From various GIS (Geographical Information Systems) data given as input, such as population density, land usage, street network and building footprints, our system assigns type and style of the buildings to its footprints and calls the corresponding shape grammar rules to efficiently create detailed large-scale models. The shape grammar rules which are responsible for the creation of the actual building geometries are manually derived from photos and plans of remaining buildings, archaeological excavation data, and (historical) paintings. To complete the model of the reconstructed urban zone, streets are automatically embedded according to the given GIS data and appropriate vegetation is added based on simple procedural rules.

Automated reconstruction of Roman housing architecture

This paper presents a novel approach for the automatic creation of vegetation scenarios in real or virtual 3D cities in order to simplify the complex design process and time consuming modeling tasks in urban landscape planning. We introduce shape grammars as a practical tool for the rule-based generation of urban open spaces. The automatically generated designs can be used for pre-visualization, master planning, guided design variation and digital content creation in general (e.g. for the entertainment industry). In a first step, we extend the CGA shape grammar by Muller et al. (2006) with urban planning operations. In a second step, we employ the possibilities of shape grammars to encode design patterns (Alexander et al., 1977). Therefore, we propose several examples of design patterns allowing for an intuitive high-level placement of objects common in urban open spaces (e.g. plants). Furthermore, arbitrary interactions between distinct instances of the vegetation and the urban environment can be encoded. With the resulting system, the designer can efficiently vegetate landscape and city parks, alleys, gardens, patios and even single buildings by applying the corresponding shape grammar rules. Our results demonstrate the procedural design process on two practical example scenarios, each one covering a different scale and different contexts of planning. The first example illustrates a derivation of the Garden of Versailles and the second example describes the usage of high-level rule sets to generate a suburbia model.

Procedural design of urban open spaces

The mechanistic understanding of the physiology and interactions of microorganisms in starter cultures is critical for the targeted improvement of fermented milk products, such as yogurt, which is produced by Streptococcus thermophilus in co-culture with Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus. However, the use of complex growth media or milk is a major challenge for quantifying metabolite production, consumption, and exchange in co-cultures. This study developed a synthetic medium that enables the establishment of defined culturing conditions and the application of flow cytometry for measuring species-specific biomass values. Time courses of amino acid concentrations in mono-cultures and co-cultures of L. bulgaricus ATCC BAA-365 with the proteinase-deficient S. thermophilus LMG 18311 and with a proteinase-positive S. thermophilus strain were determined. The analysis revealed that amino acid release rates in co-culture were not equivalent to the sum of amino acid release rates in mono-cultures. Data-driven and pH-dependent amino acid release models were developed and applied for comparison. Histidine displayed higher concentrations in co-cultures, whereas isoleucine and arginine were depleted. Amino acid measurements in co-cultures also confirmed that some amino acids, such as lysine, are produced and then consumed, thus being suitable candidates to investigate the inter-species interactions in the co-culture and contribute to the required knowledge for targeted shaping of yogurt qualities.

/pdf/differential-amino-acid-uptake-and-depletion-in-mono-1etuhucf.pdf

Differential Amino Acid Uptake and Depletion in Mono-Cultures and Co-Cultures of Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus in a Novel Semi-Synthetic Medium

Andreas Ulmer

Papers

Procedural modeling of buildings

Rome Reborn 2.0: A Case Study of Virtual City Reconstruction Using Procedural Modeling Techniques

Automated reconstruction of Roman housing architecture

Procedural design of urban open spaces

Differential Amino Acid Uptake and Depletion in Mono-Cultures and Co-Cultures of Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus in a Novel Semi-Synthetic Medium