Automated urban management processes: Integrating a graphical editor for modular domain-specific languages into a 3D GIS

In this paper we present the results of integrating a graphical editor for geospatial processing workflows into a 3D GIS. We use modular domain-specific languages (DSLs) that are tailored to specific application domains. The vocabulary consists of so-called recipes that are grouped into cookbooks representing the language for a certain application domain. Recipes can be reused in multiple cookbooks. This approach allows for a good usability as the user quickly becomes familiar with the domain-specific languages by recognizing common recipes. In this paper we also describe guidelines for choosing the right granularity for recipes which allows for complex rules while using simplest possible recipes. We also describe a workflow for domain-specific language design based on ontologies to identify the correct domain vocabulary. Our approach can be used to automate processing of geospatial datasets in the area of urban planning. To evaluate our approach we use the implemented graphical rule editor in a practical scenario and present it to a user group from the urban API project.