COWI has extensive experience with visualizing small and large-scale infrastructure projects involving roads, railways, bridges and utility lines. The tools are the same, but the task always differs as the preconditions change from project to project. The requirement for visualizations in, e.g., an EIA includes displaying the project in such a manner that decision-makers and the public are able to form an accurate picture of the project and its consequences for landscape, environment and surroundings. Therefore, how a project is visualized, including the choice of points to photograph, depends on a technical assessment and experience from prior similar projects.

Collaboration with the customer and other COWI departments
Creating infrastructure visualizations is done in collaboration with the customer and the designers. We greatly benefit from COWI's many disciplines and our colleagues' wide, technical range. By combining COWI's aerial photos and height model with 3D models of the project, we efficiently create true-to-scale geographical models that we use for creating traditional visualizations, but also for analysing visibility prior to a detail design being determined.

Precision and documentation
By basing our visualizations on a national 3D landscape model based on laser scanning and aerial photography, we ensure that the suggested project is geometrically correctly placed in the landscape and that visualizations are true. In cities, we typically supplement the landscape model with our 3D urban models, allowing a new project to be realistically visualized in relation to the existing urban mass.