An Object-Oriented Framework for the Realization of 3D Geographic Information Systems

This paper shows, that the framework developed at the Fraunhofer-Institute allows the implementation of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) on a higher level. For some areas of GIS development, base functionality is available and therefore the time of implementation is reduced. Using object-oriented concepts guarantees the design of GIS in a more efficient way. Therefore, the framework has been developed as a class-library. This will ensure the reusability, maintenance and most importantly the expandability of the software. There are several functionalities extracted for the framework which are generally usable in GIS. The following areas are especially supported: * the construction of a graphic user interface (GUI) * The task of modeling and analyzing spatial objects in a 3D data model * the object management in the form of lists, trees, hash-tables, octtrees, etc. In the field of urban and environmental planning, this framework has considerable advantages.