Advancing Smart City Development by Geospatial Data Sharing

To support smart city development, the Lands Department (LandsD) initiated creation of a territory-wide 3D Digital Map in 2021, encompassing 3D Visualisation Map, 3D Indoor Map and 3D Pedestrian Network.

Created from advanced surveying and mapping technologies, the 3D Visualisation Map contains high-precision, photorealistic 3D models of over 210,000 buildings, 5,000 infrastructure facilities (including roads, flyovers, footbridges, and subways), and over 9,100 km of 3D Pedestrian Network. This 3D geospatial dataset has become the most comprehensive locally. With native and open formats, it enables integration with various spatial data for analyses and applications in urban planning, land administration, project development, environmental assessments, transportation studies, spatial analysis, and game design, significantly contributing to smart city development in Hong Kong.

LandsD also created 3D Indoor Map for selected government and private buildings, community facilities and MTR stations, providing information of floors, units and points-of-interest for promoting indoor data applications such as location-based services, tourism and indoor navigation. 3D Digital Map has been released in phases since 2022, with the complete set for the whole territory of Hong Kong launched in March 2025.

Furthermore, LandsD has introduced the one-stop online application platform “Open3Dhk” (3d.map.gov.hk) for exploring the 3D Visualisation Map and 3D Indoor Map, and the Streetscape360 feature for viewing and measuring street-level panoramic images. Open3Dhk allows 3D map data download, and data streaming with sample code via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), empowering web services and smart applications development by the innovation and technology sector and academia. More 3D map applications will be added to “Open3Dhk” over time.

Please click here for the press release and click here to access the datasets, API and sample codes of the 3D Digital Map.

[Acknowledgement to LandsD for providing material for the story.]