Visualization of Vibrant Cities and Regions

Facing a continuous state of transition and herewith connected financial, societal and ecological challenges such as the climate or demographic change (United Nations 2013), cities try to integrate innovative information and communication technologies in order to optimize administrative processes, legitimize decision making and to involve all relevant local actors into processes of public relevance. In this context 3D-GIS-models offer various not yet exploited potentials for all named levels of interest. This paper presents an overview over existing application fields for 3D-GIS-solutions, further proposing a categorization in order to be able to develop and implement target-oriented solutions. Moreover, this paper presents the project activities of the Fraunhofer IAO, the city of Cologne and the provider of geo-information-services ESRI, designing and developing end-user oriented applications for the 3D-GIS-tool CityEngine. Therefore various city departments such as the agencies for city planning, traffic and environment were involved in an iterative process in order to identify potential application fields and their benefits within the administrative work as well as their advantages regarding existing solutions and processes. Additionally, the participants decided upon a set of focus applications to be developed within the project. Therefore, this document will concentrate on the potential benefits of the identified and cooperatively designed application fields, further outlining the first steps of the development phase of the citizen participation application.