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The VLM engine as a graph

529,297 real data points, 74 datasets, 12 engines — as a walkable knowledge graph. 517,504 of them sit at their real position: a tree, a street light, a bench in Vienna.

Open data · updated November 2026

The datasets sit on the outside, each one with real positions a small Vienna made of its own points, over the city boundary, the Danube and the Danube Canal: official tile layers such as cadastre, flood zones and noise, OpenStreetMap, own measurements and time series. The 12 engines work in the middle, the answers they become sit above; the tools hang off their engine like small moons. Zoom in and you see the city made of 232,661 trees — proof that the graph is not decoration. The AI invents nothing in it: it only translates. The graph shows what is there, never how it is computed.

The engine graph: datasets as glowing mini-Viennas around 12 engines, the answers above Explore the graph full screen →

The 12 engines

Score engine

Source of truth · 8 measures × 8 perspectives. 8 weighted measures across 8 perspectives, deterministic and frozen by golden tests — the same formula for address, Grätzl and district. No chance, no AI.

AI translation

language ⇄ weights. Gemini only translates — wishes into weights, facts into language. It never ranks and never invents a score; if it is down, the data-built text is there instantly.

Atmosphere fingerprint

8 axes from 14 signals. Every place as a profile of 8 axes, composed from 14 measured signals — personality, not a category, and never part of the score.

Light engine

sun for every minute of the year. Sun position, a horizon from the official eaves heights of the neighbouring houses, terrain and tree crowns — computed for every window of an address, never guessed.

Pascal · 3D stage

house, flat and street in 3D. The house from the official roof model, the flat from the floor plan, around it the real street: trees, lights, benches, crossings, stops — in the light of the computed sun.

Story engine

facts → language. Measurements become language like a local Viennese friend’s — with a mandatory trade-off, never invented; computed once per Grätzl and perspective.

Map engine

own vector tiles · MapLibre. Own tiles on our own domain, own style light and dark, 3D trees and night light — no Google Maps, no third-party server while you read.

Noise engine

official map + own overflight count. Road, rail and aircraft noise from the official environmental noise map, plus the own count of low-flying aircraft over 99 places. A measured drawback is never removed, only explained better.

Climate engine

summer heat modelled, climate measured. A summer-heat index per Grätzl from built form, green, trees, water and elevation — labelled as modelled, never as measured degrees. Plus the Hohe Warte climate series and today’s weather.

Roof engine

green roof, sun, room on top. From the official roof model: which roofs can carry a green roof, where a storey would fit and how much sun it would get — computed house by house, shown per district.

Ground & hazards

what the Azima report checks. Flood, heavy rain, torrents, earthquakes, radon, contaminated sites, geology, listed status and zoning from official tiles — read for every address, never guessed.

Image engine

renders, previews, covers. From the own map, the build renders the pages’ 3D images, one preview image per page and the covers of the short films. A place’s character image is a real, freely licensed photo of the area, only restyled — the geometry stays.

What they become

One searchwish, address, ranking
Place sheetscore, character, everyday
Compare & PDFwho wins where
Azima reportlight for one flat
PagesDE/EN, prerendered
Short filmsVienna from above
Walkshousing walks & trails

The tools

MapLibre GL

open map library. Draws the map with WebGL from vector tiles — open source, no account with a map provider.

PMTiles

one tile file. All of Vienna in one file on our own domain; the browser reads just the tiles it needs via range requests.

three.js · WebGPU

the 3D stage. Renders house, flat and street — with WebGPU where the device supports it, otherwise WebGL2.

KTX2 textures

compressed all the way to the GPU. Plaster, parquet and foliage arrive as GPU-compressed textures — a fraction of the memory on a phone.

Gemini

language model as translator. Translates wishes into weights and facts into language — with a fixed response schema, a small budget and a fallback to the data text.

Sun position (NOAA)

computed astronomically. The sun’s path for every minute of the year with the NOAA method — accurate to the minute, also in winter.

Cloudflare

Pages · Functions · R2. Pages, tiles and functions at the network edge, with no own server; counting happens there without cookies.

Prerender

static pages. Every page is built as finished HTML — search engines and AI answers read real content.

Service worker

fast return, partly offline. Keeps public files on the device — return visits load instantly, never with personal data.

GeoSphere Austria

climate and weather data. The official Hohe Warte climate series and today’s weather — openly licensed, credited as a source.

Paddle

checkout for the report. Sells the Azima report as merchant of record with invoice and tax; loaded only when you click buy.

City colours & sky

one palette, one sky. One colour palette for map, 3D stage and report and one computed sky per time of day — which is why the images look like the map they come from.

The datasets in the graph

Point = point, line = middle vertex, area = mean of the outer ring — the same rules as the data-point atlas in “Vienna in numbers”.

Language & knowledge

Place stories
eight perspectives per Grätzl, six per district, computed once
930
Magazine reports
one long living report per Grätzl and district
119
Neighbourhood walks
own walks through a neighbourhood’s everyday life, one point per stop
11
Place knowledge
fingerprint, essence and postcode per place
122

Images

3D images of the city
from the own map, rendered at build time
33
Preview image per page
drawn at build time, per page and language
156
Film covers
one cover per short film
5

VLM itself

Film views
all channels together (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram), the curve per day — via Zernio, transferred by hand
20,899

Culture & food

Restaurants & bars
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
5,631
Cafés
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
1,325
Café terraces
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
2,993
Heurigen
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
162
Beisln
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
694
Sausage stands
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
92
Markets
Permanent markets, curated
18
Christmas markets
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
17

Housing

Council housing
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
1,678
Neighbourhoods
99 curated neighbourhoods
99
Actual land use
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
4,774
Building periods
City of Vienna building typology, per Grätzl and district (CC BY 4.0)
122
Flat prices
Statistics Austria, per district 2015–2025
23

Roofs

Roofs checked for green roofs
City of Vienna LOD2 roof model, summarised per district
195,172
Buildings in the roof model
City of Vienna generalised roof model LOD2.1 (CC BY 4.0)
195,218
Houses with room on top
roof model + zoning: where a storey would fit
36,399
Sun on the new storey
horizon from the neighbours’ eaves, per house
28,264

City light

Public street lights
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
172,296

Heat & climate

Summer heat index
modelled from built form, green, trees, water, elevation — not a measured °C value
122
Sun windows
built form, slope and view per Grätzl
99
Climate years Hohe Warte 2020–2025
GeoSphere Austria, mean yearly temperature (CC BY 4.0)
6

3D street world

Benches
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
21,978
Litter bins
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
13,098
Zebra crossings
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
11,248
Bike racks
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
8,290
Bollards
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
2,879
Advertising columns
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
872
3D landmarks
City of Vienna LOD2 roof model + own models
85
Boats in marinas
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
40
Street surfaces
City of Vienna street surfaces and cycle paths (SISBELAGOGD, RADWEGEOGD, CC BY 4.0)
910,115

Terrain & hazards

Terrain model
geoland.at DTM 10 m (CC BY 4.0)
592
Flood zones HQ30–HQ300
BMLUK flood directive 2026 (CC BY 4.0)
1,610
Heavy-rain runoff
BMLUK hazard map (CC BY 4.0)
584
Torrent zones
WLV hazard zone plan
185
Seismic hazard
GeoSphere Austria (CC BY 4.0)
23
Radon potential
AGES radon map (CC BY 4.0)
26
Geology
GeoSphere Austria, geology 1:50,000
2,642
Contaminated sites
Environment Agency contaminated-sites atlas (CC BY 4.0)
205

Trees

Street and park trees
City of Vienna tree register (CC BY 4.0)
232,661

Green & water

Parks & green spaces
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
6,055
Drinking fountains
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
1,941
Swimming spots
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
69
Dog zones
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
222
Allotments
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
740
Green roofs & facades
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
473
City hiking trails
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
14
Vineyards
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
555

Records & law

Cadastre parcels
BEV cadastre without owners, as of 1 Apr 2026
247,925
Zoning
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
53,806
Listed monuments
Federal Monuments Office, Vienna list 2026
3,355
Energy layers
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
8,560
Broadband grid
Broadband atlas RTR (data.gv.at)
42,305

Mobility

Transit stops
Wiener Linien GTFS (CC BY 4.0)
4,264
Cycle paths
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
7,386
EV chargers
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
755
Long-running roadworks
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
76
Car parks
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
320
Tram tracks
OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)
1,997

Noise

Environmental noise
Strategic noise maps 2022 (laerminfo.at)
588
Overflights, counted per place
low-flying aircraft over 99 places since 2026-07-25, own measurement — counted per place and summed: one aircraft over three places counts three times
68,577

Everyday needs

Doctors
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
7,516
Pharmacies
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
344
Supermarkets
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
1,669

Education

Schools
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
806
Kindergartens
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
1,711
Universities
City of Vienna Open Data (CC BY 4.0)
21

How the graph is drawn

The graph is not a picture but its own WebGL renderer: all 529,297 points are stored as 16-bit positions inside the Vienna frame, sorted along a space-filling curve and saved as deltas — about 2.5 bytes per point, 1.2 MB for the whole city instead of 15 bytes per point as GeoJSON. Drawing is additive: where the city is dense, the dataset glows like a galaxy core. On a phone the world turns to portrait, two fingers zoom, Back closes; whoever cannot see gets the same nodes as a list.

Frequently asked

Are the points in the graph real?

Yes. 42 of the 74 datasets show every entry at its real position, only scaled down — the largest is the tree cadastre with 232,661 trees. The others say what a point is there: an official tile (cadastre, flood zones, noise), a Grätzl or district, a day of a time series or an image. The data comes from the City of Vienna, OpenStreetMap, Wiener Linien, Statistics Austria, GeoSphere Austria and other authorities; 16 datasets are own measurements and curated content.

What does the AI do in the engine?

It translates only: wishes into weights and facts into language. It never ranks and never invents a score — the score engine is deterministic and frozen by golden tests.

Where can I explore the graph live?

In the app under “Vienna in numbers” → Tech, or directly via viennalivingmap.com/#insights=engine — full screen, also on the phone.

Can I use the graph in an article or talk?

Yes — the renders on this page and the live graph may be shown with the credit “Vienna Living Map”. The data sources are named in the methodology.

How VLM works · Vienna in numbers · All guides

How do you want to live?

Describe your everyday — the map turns it into places across Vienna.