A Hierarchy of Levels of Detail for 3D Utility Network Models

The paper presents a new hierarchy of multiple levels of detail (LoD) designed for the modeling of underground utility networks. The hierarchy of LoDs is applied to water management possible scenarios in the context of determining the aging of distribution networks. The hierarchy of LoDs proposes four levels, two sub-levels, and three quality levels. The various LoDs are defined based on the dimension of the space and the geometric primitives, the topology, the semantic aspects, the contextual information, and the data quality (regarding 3D data collecting). It is believed that this number of levels is sufficient and appropriate to cover the modeling of underground utility networks suitable for various applications and consequently will help increase the use of 3D UUN models and their sharing.