IndVizCMap: visibility color map in an indoor 3D space

Abstract

The widespread availability of indoor and outdoor 3D models enables us to answer a wide range of spatial visibility queries in the presence of obstacles (e.g., buildings, furniture). Example queries include "what is the best position for placing a surveillance camera in an indoor space?" "what is the best position for placing a notice board in a doctor's station or a billboard in a city for a particular font size?" or "which hotel gives the best view of the city skyline?". These queries require computing and differentiating the visibility of a target object from each viewpoint of the surrounding space. This paper presents IndVizCMap that constructs a visibility color map (VCM), where each point in the space is assigned a color value denoting the visibility measure of the target. IndVizCMap is a scalable, efficient and comprehensive solution to construct VCM for a fixed target that considers the partial visibility of the target from viewpoints. Data structures for the fixed target support incremental updates of the VCM if the target moves to near-by positions. More importantly, IndVizCMap can output VCM considering readability of text data displayed on target.