Informed Virtual Geographic Environments: An Accurate Topological Approach

Virtual geographic environment (VGE) technique derives from geographic information systems (GIS) and virtual reality (VR). A VGE represents three dimensional geographic data, to target visualisation as well as simulation applications. It is generally built upon a grid-based representation which raises the well-known problems of localised data accuracy and multiple data merging. In this paper we propose a novel approach of VGE using a topological model. This approach provides an exact representation of GIS data, allowing an accurate geometrical exploitation. Moreover, our model can merge and represent several semantic information, even if spatially overlapping. Finally, we illustrate this model with a VGE application which is able to automatically extract the required data from standard GIS files, and which then allows to navigate and retrieve information from the computed VGE.