Success Stories

Westport, Ireland produced a 3D city model to promote the town as a world-class tourist destination and business location and help preserve its rich heritage.

As a rapidly developing small city, scenic Westport, Ireland, wanted to help ensure continued growth as a world-class tourist destination and prime business location as well as providing a planning tool to help preserve the heritage and special character of the town. To market the city to an international audience, the local Town Council commissioned the creation of a 3D digital city model that anyone can explore using Google Earth.

Approach

According to Peter Hynes, Westport Town Manager, Westport is in a phase of rapid development, and part of the town’s challenge is to protect its uniqueness while ensuring that it grows and develops into the future. “Westport is unique and charming, but it is not a museum piece—we need to ensure that the town continues to grow in a sustainable way built on the solid foundation inherited from past generations,” says Hynes.

To support sustained growth and reach an international audience with the message that Westport is a great place to live, work, and play, the town commissioned visualization specialists AMT3D to build a 3D virtual model of the town—now available on CD, online and on Google Earth. The initial goal in building the model was to accurately visualize in 3D how a new development would look and affect its location.

“The days of town planners relying upon solid architectural models made of cardboard and balsa wood are over,” says Brendan Hafferty, Managing Director of AMT3D. “Interactive digital models offer so many more benefits. As you can imagine, it’s very hard to email a cardboard model, host it on-line, or put it on a CD, not to mention being able to redesign streets on-screen or insert 3D CAD models of new developments to show the public and city council members exactly how new buildings will look in context.”

Instead of building its own platform to publish the 3D model, Westport chose to host the model on Google Earth, saving substantial money, time, and effort, and providing access to the virtual town to anyone with access to a computer. International visitors to the virtual town can even turn on the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth and view 3D models for many of the town’s buildings. The buildings feature high-resolution photo textures that let visitors see and read signs on the fronts of stores, and see merchandise in some of the windows. Even the town’s bridges and rivers are modeled and textured. “While the original idea of producing Westport3D was to aid in town planning, the advent of Google Earth opened up a whole new opportunity for the virtual visitor not only to see where in the world Westport is, but also to walk up and down our streets and become enticed to plan a visit,” says Hynes.

Result

The Town Council has been actively using the digital computer model to show how proposed buildings will impact the existing environment, enabling significant improvements to the initial design, public consultation and overall planning process. Further development of the model will extend its use as a planning tool for traffic flow simulation, road development and emergency and disaster management.

“The 3D model has been proven to be the ideal way to show proposed new developments in context, highlighting issues of shade, impact on other buildings, viewpoints from all angles and so on,” says Hynes. “The model has been so successful that it is now in its third phase of expansion and when completed will become one of the largest and most accurate 3D digital town models in the world built using laser scanning technology.”

Since the development of Westport3D, many other significant applications of the model have evolved. It has become a valuable aid in the continued global marketing of Westport as one of Ireland’s premier tourist destinations. The model has also become an information source for individuals or businesses planning to move to the area.

Westport3D has even created opportunities for the town’s businesses to advertise their services. “Embedded hotlinks within the model on Google Earth provide visitors with direct access to business websites right from within the model,” says Hafferty. “Westport3D will provide a cohesive and central link between all business ventures in the town that can be accessed within the same virtual reality, enhancing Westport’s image as an ideal tourist destination and location for work, life and recreation.”

The Westport3D model appearing on Google Earth has enhanced local pride and the sense of community in the area as a whole. It also enabled the town to take an active approach to encouraging hands-on civic participation. Westport launched “The Town of Tomorrow” competition to ask the leaders of tomorrow how they would like to see Westport take shape in the future. Entrants took sections of the town and redesigned them using Google SketchUp, a product so intuitive that it is ideally suited for public use. Says Hynes, “There was a huge surge of interest among students and a great feeling of inclusion in the town’s decision-making process.”

The local Cineplex theater hosted the award ceremony as the wider Westport community gathered to hear the announcement of the winners of the pioneering competition. The city hailed the competition as a resounding success, setting the scene for more community involvement in the future.

Concludes Hafferty, “Westport3D is a development that will undoubtedly be followed by more and more towns and cities throughout Ireland and elsewhere, as planners and architects come to understand the tremendous benefits of being able to design, plan and interact with the future urban environment in 3D.”

About the Cities in 3D Program

The Google Cities in 3D Program invites local governments to share their 3D data with the public by adding a model of their city to Google Earth. Google Earth combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and 3D buildings to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips. Google SketchUp is a powerful, easy-to-learn 3D software tool that combines a simple, yet robust tool-set with an intelligent drawing system that streamlines and simplifies 3D design. By enriching the 3D representation of a city on Google Earth, local governments can reach over 350 million Google Earth users, fostering economic development and boosting tourism.