Bluesky has added Edinburgh and Glasgow to its growing coverage of MetroVista 3D city models. Acquired using a state-of-the-art aerial sensor that simultaneously captures vertical and oblique imagery together with LiDAR, the 3D data is becoming increasingly popular for smart city applications.
Providing a geographically accurate and detailed 3D representation of the urban environment, MetroVista data has already been used for a range of applications including urban design and housing, defence and security modelling, insurance assessments and utility and telecom planning.
Ralph Coleman, director of sales, Bluesky, said, “We are becoming progressively more urbanised; in order to make informed and joined-up decisions, it’s essential to not only visualise how our cityscapes look now but also measure, model and analyse the impact of new developments.
“Using MetroVista 3D models, we can visualise the present and simulate the future, enabling analysis of the impact and engaging communication of the results, all with a high degree of confidence and without leaving the office.”
Bluesky captured the centres of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2021 and the data is now available as ultra-high resolution 5-centimetre aerial photography together with 16 points per metre (ppm) LiDAR. The data is also being processed to create a fully-rendered mesh model suitable for use in a range of GIS, CAD and modelling packages.
The Leica CityMapper sensor, used to capture the MetroVista data, was the world’s first hybrid airborne sensor. The first camera captures vertical (nadir) true-ortho aerial photography in both RGB and near infrared, while the remaining four cameras provide 360-degree oblique coverage. Combined with data from the integrated high-density LiDAR, this enables the production of detailed city-wide mesh models with minimal manual interaction.
