Automated generation of an historic 4D city model of hamburg and its visualisation with the GE engine

Current 3D city models are already available for many cities world-wide. However, the production of historical city models is still in its infancy. In this paper a procedure is presented that combines different data sources in order to derive individual 3D city models of different time periods using the example of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. A wooden model of the city from the year 1644 and an official map from 1859 have been used as a basis for the generation of the 4D city model. The physical model (~1:1000) was scanned by a fringe projection system for 3D modelling, while the digitized data from the map were combined with height information from different data sources. These two geo-referenced 3D city models were used to derive further epochs (1200, 1400, 1589 and 1700) using different historical bird’s-eye views (isometric views) of the city. For interactive navigation and visualization of the 4D city model a program was developed using the Google Earth Application Programming Interface.