Web-based 3-D GIS for Location Query in Real Estate Application

SUMMARY The Web-based 3-D GIS would be the most appropriate tool for decision-maker of land management and development. Because, it provides with not only the basic GIS functions, e.g. the positioning and the measurement of distance and area, but also more realistic landscape and architecture detail. It also gives the user an immersive virtual reality environment through the Internet that is rather different from merely through texts, pictures or videos. The main topic of this study is to provide sufficient location information for the user to select the optimum living environment through a Web-based 3-D GIS platform. At the beginning, we reconstruct a photo-realistic city model based on a 2-D GIS building layer that contains building ground plans and attributes, e.g. number of storey. For the purpose of increasing The Internet data streaming efficiency and reducing cost in building modeling, a multi-scale building modeling is proposed in this research such as block model, generic texture model, photo-realistic economic model, and photo-realistic detailed model. For the last one, the arcades and the billboards which extruded from the facade are both modeled for buildings along the major roads because they represent a distinguishing feature of the buildings in Taiwan. In real estate applications based on the designed Web-based 3-D GIS platform, a location query system for selecting the optimum living environment has been established. When a user starts the query, the 3-D scene will transit to a specific position and shows the environmental information to the user. Some geo-spatial query and analysis functionalities were performed, such as address and road-junction positioning, and profile analysis etc. Therefore, users can make efficient decisions on real estate market through this system. 1. INTRODUCTION Real estate refers to land and improvements attached to it. The business activity about it is