A NEW LoD DEFINITION HIERARCHY FOR 3D CITY MODELS USED FOR NATURAL DISASTER RISK COMMUNICATION TOOL

Taking precautions before a disaster to reduce the causalities and losses engendered by natural disasters is relatively cheaper, and more importantly, better than cure. The authors propose a conceptual framework with the consideration of all stakeholders related to the disaster management to have a better risk management, and to guide the design, implementation and integration of the 3D urban modeling tools into disaster risk visualization. In this study, a new indoor LoD hierarchy is proposed for building objects. The LoD definitions of CityGML are only for the external parts of the city structures and the indoor is modeled in one LoD only. Similar to the outdoor definitions of CityGML, the proposed indoor LoD definitions aim to achieve robust definitions. This framework allows visualization in all the possible 3D urban disaster situations.