IndoorGML Indoor Spatial Data
Open BetaIndoorGML is an OGC standard for describing the inside of buildings: room geometries, adjacency topology, and a navigation graph. Its key idea is dual-space: a building is described simultaneously as a Primal Space (physical cells — rooms, corridors) and a Dual Space (a connectivity graph of nodes and edges for routing). Our exporter builds IndoorGML 1.0 XML from indoor-tagged OSM data: polygons become CellSpace and State nodes, lines become TransitionSpace. To be honest about the main limitation: indoor tagging in OSM is very uneven — detailed data exists only for major airports, a few museums, and actively mapped malls; for most buildings OSM stores only the outdoor footprint. Geometry is exported in 2D (floor heights estimated at 3 m per level), and graph connectivity is simplified. It's an excellent starting point for prototypes, but not a production-grade map.
Key Features
About IndoorGML Format
IndoorGML is an OGC standard for describing the interior space of buildings. Its distinctive feature is the dual description: the same building is recorded at once as a set of physical cells (rooms, corridors, halls) and as a connectivity graph along which a route is built from the entrance to the door you need.
The format is needed where an ordinary map ends: inside an airport, a railway station, a shopping center, a hospital. Indoor navigation, evacuation route calculation and movement analytics are built on exactly this kind of model.
The export turns OSM indoor mapping into an IndoorGML 1.0 document based on GML 3.2: polygons become CellSpace cells and the matching graph nodes, lines become TransitionSpace transitions, and the class of a cell is determined by its layer. The geometry is two-dimensional in WGS84, floor height is estimated at three meters, and the limit is 50,000 features.
The main limitation lies not in the format but in the data: detailed indoor mapping exists in OpenStreetMap only for a fraction of large venues — some airports, museums, stations and actively mapped shopping centers. Most buildings in the database hold only their outer outline, and the export will come out almost empty. It is worth checking this in advance by looking at the building on the map.
What Program Opens IndoorGML Files
The following programs and applications can open, edit, and work with IndoorGML Indoor Spatial Data (.gml) files exported from OSM2CDR:
Format specifications
- Open standard
- 2D only
- Lossless (no quality loss)
- Stores feature attributes
- Output: 1 file
- IndoorGML 1.0 XML (GML 3.2) with Primal/Dual space: polygons -> CellSpace, lines -> TransitionSpace; 2D geometry, floor heights estimated at 3 m, 50,000-feature limit.
Who Uses IndoorGML Maps
How to Export IndoorGML
How to Open After Export
- QGIS (free) — open the .gml as a vector layer with the GML driver: the geometry of cells and transitions is read directly, and this is the fastest check of the contents.
- The IndoorGML Reference Encoder — the standard's reference editor: it shows the physical space and the graph and lets you refine the connectivity.
- xmllint — the xmllint --format command shows the structure of the document and at the same time confirms that the XML is valid.
- ArcGIS Indoors or the 3D City Database — the route for a production scenario: the data is loaded as a basis and developed further for navigation.
Popular maps in IndoorGML
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