Many of the challenges of the next century will have physical dimensions, such as tsunamis, hurricanes, and climate change as well as human dimensions such as economic crises, epidemics, and emergency responses. With pioneering editors and expert contributors, Advanced Geoinformation Science explores how certain technical aspects of geoinformation

Geomatics, the handling and processing of information and data about the Earth, is one geoscience discipline that has seen major changes in the last decade, as mapping and observation systems become ever more sensitive and sophisticated. This book is a unique and in-depth survey of the field, which has a central role to play in tackling a host of environmental issues faced by society. Covering all three strands of geomatics - applications, information technology and surveying - the chapters cover the history and background of the subject, the technology employed both to collect and disseminate data, and the varied applications to which geomatics can be put, including urban planning, assessment of biodiversity, disaster management and land administration. Relevant professionals, as well as students in a variety of disciplines such as geography and surveying, will find this book required reading. This rapidly developing field uses increasingly complex and accurate systems. Today, technology enables us to capture geo-data in full 3D as well as to disseminate it via the Web at the speed of light. We are able to continuously image the world from space at resolutions of up to 50 cm. Airborne LiDAR (laser surveying) sensors can be combined with digital camera technology to produce geometrically correct images of the Earth's surface, while integrating these with large-scale topographic maps and terrestrial as well as aerial images to produce 3D cityscapes that computer users can explore from their desktops.

Nowadays 3D Geoinformation is needed for many planning and analysis tasks. For example, 3D city and infrastructure models are paving the way for complex environmental and noise analyzes. 3D geological sub-surface models are needed for reservoir exploration in the oil-, gas-, and geothermal industry. Thus 3D Geoinformation brings together researchers and practitioners from different fields such as the geo-sciences, civil engineering, 3D city modeling, 3D geological and geophysical modeling, and, last but not least, computer science. The diverse challenges of 3D Geoinformation Science concern new approaches and the development of standards for above- and under-ground 3D modeling, efficient 3D data management, visualization and analysis. Finally, the integration of different 3D approaches and data models is seen as one of the most important challenges to be solved.

The book is a new comprehensive textbook about creating and publishing geoinformation metadata. It is a compendium of knowledge about geoinformation metadata in INSPIRE Directive and Spatial Information Infrastructures. It contains the knowledge necessary to understand prior to the creation of geoinformation metadata. Metadata – “data about data” - describe the layers of spatial data (data series, services) responding to the questions: what?, why?, when?, who?, how? and where? Geoinformation metadata allows for exact search of the spatial data according to given criteria, regardless of where this data is located. On 15 May 2007 the EU Directive 2007/2/EC came into force establishing Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe - INSPIRE. The proper functioning of the infrastructure for spatial information would not be possible without the metadata.

The book includes the contributions to the international conference “18th 3D GeoInfo”. The papers published in the book were selected through a double-blind review process. 3D GeoInfo has been the forum joining researchers, professionals, software developers, and data providers designing and developing innovative concepts, tools, and application related to 3D geo data processing, modeling, management, analytics, and simulation. A big focus is on topics related to data modeling for 3D city and landscape models as well as their many and diverse applications. This conference series is very successfully running since 2006 and has been hosted by countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and Australia. In the period 2006 to 2017, the proceedings has been published by Springer in this series with Thomas H. Kolbe being the editor of the 2010 edition of the conference proceedings. 18th 3DGeoInfo was organized by Technical University of Munich in cooperation with the German Society for Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geoinformation (DGPF), the local associations Runder Tisch GIS e.V. (Round Table GIS) and Leonhard Obermeyer Center—TUM Center of Digital Methods for the Built Environment, and the City of Munich. The international program committee consisted of committee members of previous 3D GeoInfo conferences and further leading scientists in the field of 3D Geoinformation Science.

The book presents a collection of accepted papers from the 3DGeoinfo 2015 international conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from October 28 – 30, 2015. All papers underwent double-blind review by experts from around the globe. The conference brought together pioneering international researchers and practitioners to facilitate the dialogue on emerging topics in the field of 3D geo-information. The focus areas include: - Data Collection and Modeling: advanced approaches for 3D data collection, reconstruction and methods for representation- Data Management: topological, geometrical and network models for maintenance of 3D geoinformation- Data Analysis and Visualization: frameworks for representing 3D spatial relationships, 3D spatial analysis and algorithms for navigation, interpolation, advanced VR, AR and MR visualisation, as well as 3D visualization on mobile devices- 3D Applications: city models, Cadastre, LBS, etc.

The book covers the international state-of-the-art research in the field of 3D geo-information modeling. It focuses on comparing several types of 3D models. Due to the rapid developments in sensor techniques more and more 3D data becomes available. Effective algorithms for (semi) automatic object reconstruction are required. 3D analysis and 3D simulation techniques explore and extend the possibilities in spatial applications.