OGC invites you to its CityGML Challenge

Help to create visualization tools that support CityGML 3 and you could land a £5,000 cash prize

23 July 2019: The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), Ordnance Survey (OS), and Manchester City Council (MCC) invite interested developers to participate in the CityGML Challenge. The challenge runs from July, and will conclude with a judging and award ceremony on Thursday 24 October, 2019 in Manchester (UK).

 The winner of the challenge will benefit from:

• A £5,000 cash prize.
• Showcasing of the tool at subsequent OGC Technical Meetings.
• Recognition from having their tool used as a key resource for the Triangulum innovation challenge.

The CityGML Challenge will encourage the configuration of software tools to visualise CityGML data. CityGML is an open data model and XML-based format for the storage and exchange of virtual 3D city models. The challenge is focused on the UK city of Manchester. OS is supporting Manchester City Council in the delivery of the Triangulum project - funded by the European Commission (EC) - and has collated a range of data resources relating to the geography of Manchester’s Oxford Road Corridor in the form of a data model in the draft CityGML 3 standard. 

The objective is to encourage software developers to configure visualisation software tools to support the capabilities of version 3 of CityGML, including dynamic data feeds from a range of sensors. The resulting tools and visualisation environment are to be made openly available for one year for wider experimentation and innovation purposes, in particular as part of an Innovation Challenge focused on energy and mobility applications, held as part of the Triangulum project. Applicants are encouraged to consider a range of visualisation options, including augmented and virtual reality.

“Ordnance Survey is delighted to be sponsoring this challenge,” said Peter Parslow, OS Open Standards Lead. “We are committed to supporting CityGML as a standard for modelling rich 3D urban environments, as it enables a diverse range of dynamic data to be integrated. The challenge provides an excellent opportunity for software developers to showcase how their tools can bring geospatial data to life and inspire practical ideas for improving the quality of life in Manchester.”

“Collaborating with the Ordnance Survey and OGC offers Manchester a fantastic opportunity to explore new ways of visualising city data, creating new value from the Triangulum project,” said Martine Tommis, Project Manager, Triangulum Project, Manchester City Council.

Applicants to this challenge will be invited to present their visualisation tools at a judging event in Manchester on Thursday 24 October, 2019.

The CityGML modelling language has been successfully used in a number of city models in cities as diverse as Rotterdam, Singapore, and Chongqing. OGC has been working on CityGML version 3 for some time, and the draft specification, publicly available on GitHub, is now ready to be validated at scale.

Key changes between CityGML 3 and previous versions include: 

• a cleaner distinction between the conceptual model and encoding; 
• dynamic data handling as part of the standard, rather than an extension; and
• better modelling of the spaces that people use, as well as the ‘concrete.’

This challenge builds on the recent successful CityGML Hackathon, held in London in June, which demonstrated the maturity of this draft standard.

To learn more about how to participate in the CityGML Challenge, including the informational webinars being held on 7 August and 5 September, visit OGC’s CityGML Challenge webpage. For information on the award ceremony to be held in Manchester in October, see the CityGML Challenge Judging and Award Ceremony event page on OGC’s Calendar. Follow along at #CityGMLChallenge.

About OS

Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, and a world-leading geospatial data and technology organisation. As a reliable partner to government, business and citizens across Britain and the world, OS helps its customers in virtually all sectors improve quality of life. OS expertise and data supports efficient public services and infrastructure, new technologies in transport and communications, national security and emergency services and exploring the great outdoors. By being at the forefront of geospatial capability for more than 225 years, we’ve built a reputation as the world’s most inspiring and trusted geospatial partner. 

About Triangulum 

The Triangulum project is a European Union Horizon 2020 funded project in Manchester bringing together a partnership of public bodies and private companies. The focus in Manchester is to contribute to the development of a “smart city district” along the Oxford Road Corridor as the innovation district. The Manchester partners are the University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Siemens, local SME, Clicks and Links, and Manchester City Council alongside Eindhoven (Netherlands) and Stavanger (Norway). The project works across three themes of energy, mobility and ICT to explore innovative solutions to reduce costs, reduce energy consumption and engage with Manchester citizens. The project began in 2015 and will complete January 2020.

About Manchester City Council 

Manchester City Council is the local government authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England.

About OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is an international consortium of more than 530 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that ‘geo-enable’ the Web, wireless & location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC standards empower technology developers to make location information and services accessible and useful within any application that needs to be location-aware. Visit OGC's website at www.opengeospatial.org.