PSTree-based multi-resolution model for buildings simplification

Spatial data navigation speed is a very important element needing to be considered in network based GIS applications, especially for location based services. In this paper, a method to simplify the visualization of buildings in urban environment is proposed. It is based on a modified hierarchical building footprints merging approach and the simplified tree-based data structure, PSTree, is used to store hierarchical models. Thus, by computing the distance from viewpoint, according models can be automatically constructed and rendered, and less detailed building models are used when they are far from current viewpoint. Only the combination of a group of built-in building models is transferred to browsers, and these models are continuous in scale, so visualization effect and speed are both improved under network environment.