Visualization of Urban Digital Twins on the web with attribute-driven adaptive tiling

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Authors: Ziya Usta, Alper Tunga Akın, Ken Arroyo Ohori, Jantien Stoter
Cited by: 2
References: 19

Abstract

Despite growing use of 3D city models (3DCMs) and urban digital twins (UDTs), web tools for their processing and visualisation remain scarce. We present an interoperable, high-performance web application composed of a 3D tiler and a WebGPU viewer that enables scalable conversion, streaming, and rendering of urban datasets in compliance with open standards. The proposed system allows users to explore large-scale 3DCMs interactively without local installations. A showcase visualising quality-validation results for a 3DCM demonstrates practical value. Experiments confirm that 3D Tiles 1.1 standard enables scalable data management and richer interaction, whereas WebGPU offers up to 7x better rendering performance on modern hardware. By presenting this solution and usage example, we aim to foster development of next-generation web-based 3D geospatial, digital-twin, and metaverse solutions.

Fields of Study & Subjects

3D Modeling in Geospatial Applications Remote Sensing and LiDAR Applications 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage

Publication details

Journal / source
Environmental Modelling & Software
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
197
Pages
106863–106863
Publication date
6 January 2026
Language
EN