On March 27, the Beijing Institute of Surveying and Mapping unveiled its gInfer 3D geographic info platform during the Zhongguancun Forum 2024 Series - Beijing Smart City Spatiotemporal Information Conference. This release signifies another significant stride forward in Beijing’s smart city initiative.
With the advancement of such initiatives as the Real-3D-China and Smart-City-Construction, the 3D geographic info platform has emerged as a crucial tool for data presentation, analysis, and service. However, its application was hindered by various challenges: efficient processing and display of vast 3D data, adaptation to evolving project demands, and ensuring development progress. Drawing on extensive experience in the geographic info sector, the Beijing Institute of Surveying and Mapping has developed its own 3D geographic platform. This platform facilitates smooth rendering of large-scale 3D data and enhances the efficiency of 3D geographic info application through flexible and open architectural design concepts.
To render massive 3D data, gInfer utilizes its proprietary lightweight data technology, which reduces the file size of 3D data, optimizes its organization, and enhances rendering efficiency through lightweight processing. The platform offers a self-developed 3D data lightweight toolkit, supporting the processing of various 3D model data types. This ensures exceptional rendering performance in large scenes and substantially improves processing speed and rendering quality for large-scale and complex 3D data.
To enhance project development efficiency and accommodate diverse project needs, the gInfer platform relies on its flexible architectural design. It utilizes two sets of 3D engines for rendering, responsible for presenting 3D and business data, as well as analyzing and computing results in three dimensions on the computer screen. Each set of engines follows a distinct technological route, enabling adaptability to different project types. This approach broadens the platform’s applicability by catering to varying volumes of technical requirements. Additionally, the platform’s architecture facilitates three-dimensional queries, calculations, and analyses, which can be provided by the platform itself or accessed through services from different vendors. By unifying engines, functions, and services through a set of interfaces, the platform enhances compatibility.
Traditionally, developing geographic information applications involved selecting the underlying technology, which posed challenges during upgrades or vendor changes. Such transitions often disrupted project implementation or maintenance, requiring redevelopment if the platform or service provider changed. With the gInfer platform, developers only need to master a set of interfaces and specifications. This simplifies the application development process, allowing developers to focus on realizing project requirements without concern for the underlying technology used. Consequently, changes in underlying technology do not impact project implementation, streamlining development efforts.
The gInfer platform is very friendly to secondary development. Its development interface comes preloaded with most parameters, enabling developers to use preset functions with a single line of code. Additionally, developers can customize functions by adjusting parameters as needed.
As an open and inclusive platform, gInfer actively promotes the strategic concept of “connectivity and symbiosis.” In the upcoming phase, gInfer aims to evolve into a next-generation geographic inference platform by integrating advanced big model and GeoAI. Through collaborating with more partners, a vibrant and diverse 3D platform ecosystem that is smarter, more efficient, and sustainable can be anticipated.
In the future, efforts will be made to deepen the platform R&D, vigorously expand the service application scenarios, empower Beijing’s smart-city initiative through a more efficient system, and contribute to Beijing’s scientific and technological advancement.
