3pointD.com

Clickable Culture’s Tony Walsh sends word of a virtual London that’s been released by ImageCat Inc., who are creating 3D models for use in risk management by sectors like insurance, asset management and security. The model was created using satellite imagery from a company called DigitalGlobe, but what’s most interesting is that the model “can be visualized using popular online and off-the-shelf software packages including GoogleEarth, MSN Virtual Earth, VRML, ESRI 3D Analyst and other common GIS applications,” according to a press release.

Besides just topo information (at 60-centimeter resolution), ImageCat’s virtual London includes buildings’ structural attribute information that can be used in blast modeling, the company says. Also of note is that fact that the city was modeled using ImageCat’s MIHEA tool, which can extract GIS-compatible building information from a single high-resolution satellite image. MIHEA was developed by Pooya Sarabandi of Stanford University, “in collaboration with and funded in part by ImageCat,” according to the company’s site. I’m interested to know whether the tool is broadly available, as it would seem to be something that could speed up 3D mapping of other cities.