Conclusion

The ExaMA WP1 - Vegetation project represents a significant stride towards enhancing urban modeling through the integration of vegetation, specifically trees, into 3D models of urban environments. By focusing on the Urban Building Model (UBM) use case within the HiDALGO2 initiative, we aimed to improve the accuracy and realism of thermal and energy simulations, contributing to better building energy efficiency and indoor air quality. Through our efforts, we successfully extracted tree data from OpenStreetMap, utilized the CGAL and Gmsh library to generate 3D tree models. We integrated these models into existing flat terrain meshes. Our methodology, involving data acquisition via the Overpass API, tree model generation using Alpha Wrapping, and precise coordinate conversion through Mercator projection, ensured a robust and scalable approach to urban vegetation modeling. The use of different Levels of Detail (LOD) allowed for flexible and efficient modeling, catering to various computational and visual requirements. Our benchmarking on the HPC cluster Gaya confirmed the scalability and performance of our approach, highlighting the need of parallelization. Additionally, we addressed the challenge of missing data by implementing a system to assign default values for tree height, ensuring comprehensive coverage even in the absence of complete metadata. Overall, the ExaMA WP1 - Vegetation project has laid a strong foundation for future urban modeling endeavors, emphasizing the importance of integrating natural elements into urban simulations. The project’s outcomes not only contribute to the specific goals of the HiDALGO2 initiative but also provide valuable insights and tools for broader applications in urban planning, environmental science, and computational geometry. As we move forward, the incorporation of tree’s elevations, autorefine parallelization, and advanced shading calculations will further refine and expand the capabilities of our modeling approach, paving the way for more sustainable and livable urban environments.