Augsburg is always worth a trip – the third largest city in Bavaria not only has many famous sights, but even a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And if you can’t make it in person, you can now approach the city virtually in 3D: On a kind of interactive map more than 400,000 buildings, around 61,000 trees and 43,000 addresses can be searched for and discovered. The virtual city can be used for orientation and navigation in the city. And 14 prominent buildings, such as the town hall, the Perlach Tower or the High Cathedral, are reproduced true to the original. This makes a three-dimensional journey of discovery possible on a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
The environmental aspect is not missing either. For this purpose, around 61,000 tree locations were mapped in the form of a snapshot using the digital tree register. The digitally recorded trees are shown schematically in 3D, an aerial photo in 2D supplements the display so that the tree populations that are not individually recorded, for example on private property, can also be shown.
The visualization of the city is intended to inspire people who live in Augsburg to “explore their own city,” says Verena Rotter from the Department of Urban Development, Planning and Building of the City of Augsburg. There are still completely new corners for everyone to discover. But tourists can also use the 3D data to find their way around the city.
Above all, the virtual city should help as an instrument of urban development and planning as well as administration. Structural changes such as those at the main train station are included in the 3D city model as quickly as possible, “but this cannot happen in real time,” explains Rotter. In the future, the 3D model and its data could be used as a visualization tool for architects, to calculate heavy rain events or flood models, for climatic analyses, such as cold air corridors, or to calculate noise pollution.