Virtual city: why geographic information systems still have not turned the world of architecture
This article is about the city and architecture. Although there will be nothing about beautiful houses. There was little about them in the previous article and, alas, it diverted attention from the informational component itself and sent the discussion to the mainstream of the discussion of 3D-models of cities - and geographic information systems (GIS), which in one form or another provide this model or provide an opportunity to participate in modeling. So, two-dimensional and three-dimensional GIS of a different kind are innumerable. Why, then, geographic information systems still have not led to a revolution in urban planning?
First, let's talk about why architecture and construction should be approached more responsibly than is now accepted. The fact is that, in addition to designing buildings, the work of the architect is planning the lives of people. Every day you are gradually controlled by the city: you drive and walk along the streets traced by someone, live in houses placed with some kind of mysterious calculation, and even for some reason you set a bench in the park for nothing. The architecture all the time imperceptibly forces you to do something within the framework of your usual life, but you can code something new and you will accept it without even noticing. For example, designing a house with a bathroom in each apartment has changed the lifestyle of tens of millions of people. You would be surprised to see the innovative project of the “improved planning” dwelling house of the 30s, when it was assumed that there was enough public bath-house for washing once a week, and the toilet in each apartment was a technical and cultural breakthrough.
Typical section of the Moscow City Council, a fragment of the plan, 1925
')
Modern life is changing rapidly, and design keeps pace with it. Of course, you will not find the kulman, rolls of tracing paper and the blueprint table. They were replaced by numerous CAD systems (computer-aided design systems). Instead of jars of mascaras, gouaches and watercolors, programs for 3D modeling and photorealistic rendering. Calculations are carried out not on a slide rule, but in special software systems extracting data from three-dimensional models. Algorithms have become more complex, accuracy and reliability are higher.
But these are all quantitative, not qualitative, changes. Yes, they transformed the daily work process, but the decision-making mechanism remained the same. Sometimes no analysis is carried out at all, and the arguments can be of the level “and let’s be like that” and “it will be beautiful to look at the map later”. The economic rationale is attracted by the ears: “We built a pool of almost that size ten years ago in the city of N-sk, and it paid off X percent for Y years, so we simply index prices.” Get up to date information - voluntarily bring an avalanche of incomprehensible calculations on your head. And the majority of interested parties are satisfied with this situation, although there are also simply epic failures.
So, master plans of cities are developed by architects from the standpoint of beauty lines, their understanding of the convenience of life and intuition. These projects are evaluated and approved by managers and economists, for whom the figures of the balance of territories, expected costs and benefits are important. And the consumers of the environment, the inhabitants, do not usually influence this situation, and it does not even occur to them that they could influence it.
Somehow it looks promising general plan. Different colors - this is where what has already been built or what is planned to be built: for example, housing, park or offices. Then a detailed project is developed with an explanatory note occupying the whole cabinet - in paper form, of course.
In comparison, the constantly updated geo-information model obviously benefits. Not just a 3D map, but really an information system. Where can I select a group of houses with a mouse and find out how many people live there. Where on the map are marked all the institutions and establishments with their bandwidth and target audience. Where you can find the average traffic of cars on any street at any time. Where the measured level of noise or air pollution at some point turns into a publicly available figure on the city plan, and not into a piece of paper forgotten on the same day in a dusty folder. Alas, money and labor must be invested right here and now, and the return is expected “somewhere out there,” so the GIS into design comes extremely slowly and unevenly.
Modeling thousands of unremarkable buildings in 3D is also not a very interesting task, but it can be entrusted to automatics only conditionally. Basically, either the amateurs are engaged in this, then the result is available to everyone, but the quality is not too high, or private development companies that are professionally qualified to the cause - but they don’t rush to share the fruits of their work.
This is how a private commercial 3D-model of San Francisco looks like from a company that can bill a half million American money for a media project, and a private developer can pay for it without thinking.
One way or another, a full-fledged virtual model of the existing material (but, alas, not social) space is gradually being created. While it is rather fragmented, but it is constantly replenishing like an avalanche. Very often, only the city center or individual landmark objects are well worked out, and the rest are created automatically or not at all, but there are also examples of carpet covering, for example, Berlin with its 550,000 modeled buildings. But this is exactly the “three-dimensional map”, and not the information system. With the rest, not so noticeable and attractive for fans of information flows is still worse.
The model of Berlin, which can be downloaded piece by piece for local work. I would have such wealth in my student years!
Smaller in size, but more technological and versatile projects launched in Helsinki and Montreal based on the systems “Bentley MicroStation” and “Bentley Map”. The city model covers the underground and above-ground infrastructure and is developed using laser scanning technology. Aerial lidar survey is used to measure ground infrastructure facilities, and ground lidar survey is used for tunnels. With the model obtained, all possible municipal documentation and correspondence on real estate are synchronized. It also provides for the allocation of land for construction. This GIS proved its effectiveness in engineering projects related to the complex high-density infrastructure of the city center. Alas, the design tools from “Bentley Systems” and stand like Bentley, so I did not have to see them even with one eye. A little more you can read in the article .
City of Helsinki, Finland; City Survey Division - 3D Municipal Information System. Enough multidisciplinary GIS, as far as can be judged from open sources.
In the post-Soviet space, all development is subject to state regulation, and therefore, the GIS should be consecrated by bureaucratic procedures. All that requires government support and organization usually works very slowly, but gradually individual projects appear in Russia. For example, the creation of a single (two-dimensional) geographic information system of the Tyumen region , which is recognized as the best regional IT project in 2015 at the Global CIO competition. In addition, it allows external developers to create their own commercial GIS services based on the concept of open data. Another example: an electronic map of the underground engineering networks of Khabarovsk was recently completed, which was created by several organizations for as many as 10 years (in words: ten years). Probably, the “digitization” lasted so long because to update the information of the Soviet period, when the reality may differ from the existing plan by tens of meters - hellish work. Illustration from personal practice: I once met an undocumented Soviet cable (presumably, a connection) 15 centimeters in diameter, passing right through the basement of the building and going through the opposite wall to the white spot on a topographical survey with a modest inscription “special equipment”.
Paper topographical survey, a small piece, just so you represented the scale of the tragedy. All these lines signify something very important and mostly invisible.
The problem of even a few integrated GIS in Russia and the CIS is that they are used formally, simply as a substitute for paper maps, layouts and folders with reports, and not for modeling and analyzing variant branches and optimizing the result. In reality, a single plan is usually proposed and adopted, the quality of which depends on the talent, experience, competence and persuasiveness of the developers. In addition, all the countless deviations “only as an exception” are usually undertaken on the ground without the consent of the authors, are not reflected in any way in the draft, and it less and less correlates with reality. GIS, even two-dimensional, potentially solves this problem.
But what are these “branches”, and why are they needed, if everything works without them? Back in the 60s, the Pole Boleslav Malish came up with the method of threshold analysis. In short: when the development of a city along the old path becomes clearly irrational, too expensive or comes up against a barrier like a river or a railway, it’s not tactics that have to be changed, but strategy. In order to “cross the threshold”, we need large resources at a time, and the return is not expected immediately, so it is impossible to err at this stage. Several possible fundamentally different new development paths are selected, a forecast for costs and profits for a decade or two years ahead is made for them, and the most profitable path for the moment is chosen, which is followed by development until the next moment of stagnation. GIS is ideal for implementing this method. But it should be a much more mathematical system than those that are now, and the analysis tools should be different. Ideally, a virtual city should have its own AI (or call it an active expert system) that can both offer and evaluate seemingly incomparable options.
I managed to find information on the application of mathematical modeling of territorial development in Russia of the 21st century only for Tolyatti (2001) and Yakutsk (2003) using the “LandUse” system of the Central Research Institute of Urban Development, which has been gradually developed since the mid-1970s.
The result looks like a grid map of the existing and planned use of the territory on the basis of the value of each square of land calculated from many parameters. The mathematical model requires the input of different types of data at the entrance of the grid cards, and the number and types of parameters and the step of the required grid are calculated individually each time.With the usual GIS software complex, of course, is not compatible. UPD: Habrayuzer, who participated in the development of this system, explained that in fact she knows how to receive data from other GIS, just such is not always available, and then manual input is really used.
So, the problems of urban planning use of modern GIS are that there are separate two-dimensional wide-profile models, separately three-dimensional weakly informational, all of them are created in a large number of competing with each other and not always compatible programs and formats, while most of them are not an “official document” and can not be openly used by designers. These systems do not support the time component, and therefore do not allow for a retrospective analysis of the territory, to simulate the likely future states and compare them. The number of “information slices” of a virtual city is not yet enough for quantitative changes to become qualitative. But progress does not stand still, and sooner or later the virtual city will become a full-fledged tool of the process of urban planning, and perhaps one of its own active creators.
First, let's talk about why architecture and construction should be approached more responsibly than is now accepted. The fact is that, in addition to designing buildings, the work of the architect is planning the lives of people. Every day you are gradually controlled by the city: you drive and walk along the streets traced by someone, live in houses placed with some kind of mysterious calculation, and even for some reason you set a bench in the park for nothing. The architecture all the time imperceptibly forces you to do something within the framework of your usual life, but you can code something new and you will accept it without even noticing. For example, designing a house with a bathroom in each apartment has changed the lifestyle of tens of millions of people. You would be surprised to see the innovative project of the “improved planning” dwelling house of the 30s, when it was assumed that there was enough public bath-house for washing once a week, and the toilet in each apartment was a technical and cultural breakthrough.
Typical section of the Moscow City Council, a fragment of the plan, 1925
')
Modern life is changing rapidly, and design keeps pace with it. Of course, you will not find the kulman, rolls of tracing paper and the blueprint table. They were replaced by numerous CAD systems (computer-aided design systems). Instead of jars of mascaras, gouaches and watercolors, programs for 3D modeling and photorealistic rendering. Calculations are carried out not on a slide rule, but in special software systems extracting data from three-dimensional models. Algorithms have become more complex, accuracy and reliability are higher.
But these are all quantitative, not qualitative, changes. Yes, they transformed the daily work process, but the decision-making mechanism remained the same. Sometimes no analysis is carried out at all, and the arguments can be of the level “and let’s be like that” and “it will be beautiful to look at the map later”. The economic rationale is attracted by the ears: “We built a pool of almost that size ten years ago in the city of N-sk, and it paid off X percent for Y years, so we simply index prices.” Get up to date information - voluntarily bring an avalanche of incomprehensible calculations on your head. And the majority of interested parties are satisfied with this situation, although there are also simply epic failures.
So, master plans of cities are developed by architects from the standpoint of beauty lines, their understanding of the convenience of life and intuition. These projects are evaluated and approved by managers and economists, for whom the figures of the balance of territories, expected costs and benefits are important. And the consumers of the environment, the inhabitants, do not usually influence this situation, and it does not even occur to them that they could influence it.
Somehow it looks promising general plan. Different colors - this is where what has already been built or what is planned to be built: for example, housing, park or offices. Then a detailed project is developed with an explanatory note occupying the whole cabinet - in paper form, of course.
In comparison, the constantly updated geo-information model obviously benefits. Not just a 3D map, but really an information system. Where can I select a group of houses with a mouse and find out how many people live there. Where on the map are marked all the institutions and establishments with their bandwidth and target audience. Where you can find the average traffic of cars on any street at any time. Where the measured level of noise or air pollution at some point turns into a publicly available figure on the city plan, and not into a piece of paper forgotten on the same day in a dusty folder. Alas, money and labor must be invested right here and now, and the return is expected “somewhere out there,” so the GIS into design comes extremely slowly and unevenly.
Modeling thousands of unremarkable buildings in 3D is also not a very interesting task, but it can be entrusted to automatics only conditionally. Basically, either the amateurs are engaged in this, then the result is available to everyone, but the quality is not too high, or private development companies that are professionally qualified to the cause - but they don’t rush to share the fruits of their work.
This is how a private commercial 3D-model of San Francisco looks like from a company that can bill a half million American money for a media project, and a private developer can pay for it without thinking.
One way or another, a full-fledged virtual model of the existing material (but, alas, not social) space is gradually being created. While it is rather fragmented, but it is constantly replenishing like an avalanche. Very often, only the city center or individual landmark objects are well worked out, and the rest are created automatically or not at all, but there are also examples of carpet covering, for example, Berlin with its 550,000 modeled buildings. But this is exactly the “three-dimensional map”, and not the information system. With the rest, not so noticeable and attractive for fans of information flows is still worse.
The model of Berlin, which can be downloaded piece by piece for local work. I would have such wealth in my student years!
Smaller in size, but more technological and versatile projects launched in Helsinki and Montreal based on the systems “Bentley MicroStation” and “Bentley Map”. The city model covers the underground and above-ground infrastructure and is developed using laser scanning technology. Aerial lidar survey is used to measure ground infrastructure facilities, and ground lidar survey is used for tunnels. With the model obtained, all possible municipal documentation and correspondence on real estate are synchronized. It also provides for the allocation of land for construction. This GIS proved its effectiveness in engineering projects related to the complex high-density infrastructure of the city center. Alas, the design tools from “Bentley Systems” and stand like Bentley, so I did not have to see them even with one eye. A little more you can read in the article .
City of Helsinki, Finland; City Survey Division - 3D Municipal Information System. Enough multidisciplinary GIS, as far as can be judged from open sources.
In the post-Soviet space, all development is subject to state regulation, and therefore, the GIS should be consecrated by bureaucratic procedures. All that requires government support and organization usually works very slowly, but gradually individual projects appear in Russia. For example, the creation of a single (two-dimensional) geographic information system of the Tyumen region , which is recognized as the best regional IT project in 2015 at the Global CIO competition. In addition, it allows external developers to create their own commercial GIS services based on the concept of open data. Another example: an electronic map of the underground engineering networks of Khabarovsk was recently completed, which was created by several organizations for as many as 10 years (in words: ten years). Probably, the “digitization” lasted so long because to update the information of the Soviet period, when the reality may differ from the existing plan by tens of meters - hellish work. Illustration from personal practice: I once met an undocumented Soviet cable (presumably, a connection) 15 centimeters in diameter, passing right through the basement of the building and going through the opposite wall to the white spot on a topographical survey with a modest inscription “special equipment”.
Paper topographical survey, a small piece, just so you represented the scale of the tragedy. All these lines signify something very important and mostly invisible.
The problem of even a few integrated GIS in Russia and the CIS is that they are used formally, simply as a substitute for paper maps, layouts and folders with reports, and not for modeling and analyzing variant branches and optimizing the result. In reality, a single plan is usually proposed and adopted, the quality of which depends on the talent, experience, competence and persuasiveness of the developers. In addition, all the countless deviations “only as an exception” are usually undertaken on the ground without the consent of the authors, are not reflected in any way in the draft, and it less and less correlates with reality. GIS, even two-dimensional, potentially solves this problem.
But what are these “branches”, and why are they needed, if everything works without them? Back in the 60s, the Pole Boleslav Malish came up with the method of threshold analysis. In short: when the development of a city along the old path becomes clearly irrational, too expensive or comes up against a barrier like a river or a railway, it’s not tactics that have to be changed, but strategy. In order to “cross the threshold”, we need large resources at a time, and the return is not expected immediately, so it is impossible to err at this stage. Several possible fundamentally different new development paths are selected, a forecast for costs and profits for a decade or two years ahead is made for them, and the most profitable path for the moment is chosen, which is followed by development until the next moment of stagnation. GIS is ideal for implementing this method. But it should be a much more mathematical system than those that are now, and the analysis tools should be different. Ideally, a virtual city should have its own AI (or call it an active expert system) that can both offer and evaluate seemingly incomparable options.
I managed to find information on the application of mathematical modeling of territorial development in Russia of the 21st century only for Tolyatti (2001) and Yakutsk (2003) using the “LandUse” system of the Central Research Institute of Urban Development, which has been gradually developed since the mid-1970s.
The result looks like a grid map of the existing and planned use of the territory on the basis of the value of each square of land calculated from many parameters. The mathematical model requires the input of different types of data at the entrance of the grid cards, and the number and types of parameters and the step of the required grid are calculated individually each time.
So, the problems of urban planning use of modern GIS are that there are separate two-dimensional wide-profile models, separately three-dimensional weakly informational, all of them are created in a large number of competing with each other and not always compatible programs and formats, while most of them are not an “official document” and can not be openly used by designers. These systems do not support the time component, and therefore do not allow for a retrospective analysis of the territory, to simulate the likely future states and compare them. The number of “information slices” of a virtual city is not yet enough for quantitative changes to become qualitative. But progress does not stand still, and sooner or later the virtual city will become a full-fledged tool of the process of urban planning, and perhaps one of its own active creators.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/371769/
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