Towards a hybrid framework for the visualization and analysis of 3D spatial data

Several geospatial problems like urban subsurface analysis involve data from multiple domains and nature. For instance, an urban infrastructure analysis must take into account not only the urban elements but their geological environment. This requires the definition of hybrid schemes and algorithms that keep the dimensionality and domain of the data, while allowing the joint management of both representations in a combined way. In addition, a proper 3D visualization method that shows those heterogeneous data together can be very useful for geoscientific and GIS professionals. In this paper, we present the foundations of a real-time 3D visualization framework capable of rendering field and vector data, as well as a set of operations that can solve many problems for engaging data from different domains. We propose the use of the Stack-Based Representation of Terrains for field data which provides a whole 3D representation of volumetric terrains while allowing an efficient memory usage. The resulting hybrid framework can help geoscientists and engineers to analyze 3D complex geospatial data and make decisions at a glance.