In the legendary children’s story “Momo” by Michael Ende, one of the characters tells of a king who wanted to build an identical life size model of the planet earth. His subjects toiled day and night until at last, they victoriously pronounced that their mission was complete, only to find afterward that they used all the matter on the original planet to build the replica and that the original had ceased to exist.
GeoSim CEO Dr. Victor Shenkar, is also obsessed with the dream of replicating planet earth, or at least certain cities that he has in mind. Shenkar’s replica will be a virtual one, so residents on planet earth can remain calm. Yet the sight of the entire replica of the city of Philadelphia in the US on Shenkar’s laptop still sends a slight shudder down the spine.
”The idea of modeling cities is not new,” he explains, “But there is an immense challenge here from the technology perspective. You have to find a way of gathering a substantial amount of data about the city in question, convert them into digital data and present them as viewer would see them. We have so far completed modeling projects for two cities. One for Los Angeles, which is not yet complete and the other for Helsinki, which ran over-budget and was poor in quality.”
Globes: “Have you now managed to build a model city at a lower budget?”
Shenkar: “Yes. The model is built in three layers. First we take an aerial picture using either satellite, or airborne cameras, which gives us the city’s overall shell, which we call the “wireframe mode.” This frame has an error margin of 15 centimeters maximum and is higher that city layout that appears in road maps. Then we carry out a photo shoot from vehicles using a 360 degree angle to get images encompassing the entire scene from the ground to the sky. These pictures are then integrated with the “wireframe mode” using software that can adjust them in accordance with their coordinates. After this, we make some small adjustments manually, highlighting spots where a car is blocking the view of the building, adjusting text that is blurred and so on. The aim is to update each city once a year.”
Which cities have you chosen to build and how much did they cost?
”We set ourselves a target budget of $1-2million for each project. This was the feasibility range that we came up with the course of the market surveys we carried out. It cost us $1 million to build Philadelphia and we are now in the finishing stages. It will be launched in a couple months and will be available for use free of charge on the website of the University of Pennsylvania, which has enthusiastically adopted the concept as a method of attracting potential students to the university.
”Our second city, Lucca in the Tuscany province, is smaller and will cost several hundred thousand dollars to build, half which is being provided by the local municipality. Our first orders will be probably be from municipalities. The Tel Aviv Municipality has approved an initial pilot scheme for modeling several key traffic zones.”
A meeting under the Statue of Liberty
Victor Shenkar began working on three dimensional imaging after he retired from his post as a development team leader in the Israel Air Force. “The air force always wanted to build detailed three dimensional models of areas photographed from the air, for combat simulation,” he recalls. Following his retirement, Shenkar won one such project for the software company that he co-founded, Tiltan Systems Engineering.
Once the military project was complete, it occurred to him that there might be an even bigger demand for such technology in the modeling of cities. “In the virtual world too, a meter of space in Manhattan, serves more people than a meter of space in the Golan Heights and is therefore worth more,” he says. Tiltan Systems was formed as part of the Formula Group and was followed by its sister GeoSim, when the idea to model cities was raised. The company raised $1 million from the Chief Scientist and $5 million from an Italian partner.
Why do we need virtual cities?
”Virtual cities’ primary use is for navigation and orientation. A model can also be used as a guide to tourist and leisure activities. If, for example, you visited a fantastic Italian restaurant in Paris and can’t remember its name, you can enter the virtual Paris, follow the route you took when you were actually there, find the restaurant and recommend it to your friends. You can also go down the route to a chosen theater, enter the lobby and get the program, providing they’ll cooperate with us, or check out the hotel you booked near the city center.
”Another possible use is in computer games and virtual environments. You could, for example, create a virtual community that walks the streets of New York together, engaging in virtual conversation so to speak. You can ask someone, through the chat line, to “meet you under the Statute of Liberty” and when you get there you can talk through video conferencing. This application will be financed by virtual advertisements in the form of billboards that would be a substitute for the real thing.
"The model can also be used to upgrade a specific location search. You will be able to easily recognize a specific business by its virtual model and the owners of the actual business will be able to add details of their own to the virtual replica such as prices and video clips. The model can be used for real estate activities too. You can find the location of a building and see what it looks like and the view from its windows.”
Do you have any competitors?
”We don’t have any competitors that have reached this level of efficacy in process mechanization and dynamic animation. There is a team from the architecture and building sectors who have developed three dimensional models for house design but these are usually static and you can’t ‘walk’ through them. There are also 20-30 companies that have tried to build entire models of cities but these are usually rough models that are lacking in accuracy. Their design is a lot less comprehensive and some of them only offer a superficial view.”
Do you consider Google Earth a rival?
”Google Earth provides perfunctory aerial photos of the globe that enable identification of unique and prominent buildings only. Google itself has realized that its product is not the same as ours and they are interested in our technology.”
Isn’t there a danger that a product such as this could be used by rogue elements in criminal activity and terror attacks? A similar claim was made about Google Earth, whose technology, according to you, is a lot less accurate than yours.
”Terrorist elements also use maps but nobody has suggested making them illegal! All they do is delete the problematic sections. We will do the same thing. Every civilian technology has the potential for abuse, but despite this, you can’t stop the progress of technology.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on April 6, 2006
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2006