VIEWSHED ANALYSIS AND ITS

APPLICATIONS

PRESENTED BY:-
ANSUMAN CHAKRABORTY
 CONCEPT OF VIEWSHED
 view shed is an area that is visible from a specific
location based on elevation values of a DEM.

 Raster-based operation that makes use of terrain

elevation data to determine all areas visible to an
observer located at a specified point in a space. It
is capable of determining the intervisibility
between any two points on a raster layer of
elevation values
 PERFORMANCE OF VIEWSHED
ANALYSIS IN SOFTWARE
 A view shed analysis can be performed using one
of many GIS programs, such as Arc Map or
ERDAS IMAGINE.
 A view shed is created from a DEM by using an
algorithm that estimates the difference of
elevation from one cell (the viewpoint cell) to the
next (the target cell).
 BASIC STEPS:- INVOKE SOFTWARE ON THE
SYSTEM ADD LAYER TO THE WINDOW/VIEWER
GEOREFARENCE DIGITIZE ADD SPATIAL
ANALYST TOOLBAR GO TO SURFACE ANALYSIS
VIEWSHED PROVIDE INPUT OUTPUT FILE
NAMES FINALLY GENARATE IT.
DIAGRAM SHOWING VIEWSHED
ANALYSIS
VIEWSHED ANALYSIS PROCEDURE
 VIEWSHED CALCULATIONS
 A "view shed" is a region visible to an
observer."Visibility" refers to line of sight,
but the same concept and calculations
apply to transmission of signals in other
media: radio and microwave frequency
waves, sonar, and radar.
 View sheds can help answer many
different kinds of questions:
 How to situate infrastructure, such as
pipelines and highways, in out-of-the way
places that do not destroy the quality of
natural scenery
 Where to site transmission towers to avoid
spatial gaps in reception
 How to characterize regions under
surveillance (or not under surveillance)
 The simplest view shed calculations suppose
that light moves in straight lines in a Euclidean
space (the earth is not curved and no
refraction occurs).  This is a good
approximation for distances of several
kilometers or miles.  Corrections for the earth's
curvature and for optical refraction in the
earth's atmosphere are needed for accurate
results over longer distances.
 To be realistic and to economize on
computation time, many GIS’es allow several
parameters to control a view shed calculation. 
They play essentially two kinds of roles:
 1) To describe the elevations of an observer
(such as a fire tower) and of the objects to be
observed (such as trees, antennas, trucks).
 2) To specify limits to the observer's visibility:
horizontal directions of view, vertical directions
of view, and distances between the observer
and points to be viewed.
 PROS AND CONS OF VIEWSHED ANALYSIS

PROBLEMS OF CALCULATION
DIAGRAM OF VIEWSHED ANALYSIS
 Riggs and Dean (2007)
report that P. F. Fisher
raised concerns about
view shed analysis
reliability in 1991. They
surveyed a variety of GIS
packages and found that
the problems of
inaccuracy and
inconsistency remain.
Their findings show that
the main problems are
due to data errors, data
resolution and Viewshed
analysis algorithm errors.
 APPLICATIONS OF VIEWSHED
 A view shed analysis could estimate the impact of the
addition of a large building
 View shed analyses are also used to locate fire
observation stations in mountain areas (Lee and Stucky,
1998).
 A wonderful example of using a view shed analysis on a
line segment is from the Wyoming State Office, Bureau of
Land Management in which the office used a view shed
analysis to determine the visibility from historical trails
across Wyoming
 Applicability of View shed Analysis to Wildlife Population
Estimation: - Population estimations and indices based on
roadside or spotlight counts typically require investigators
to determine the route with maximum viewing area and
calculate area visible from the census route.
 REFERENCES
 Amantides, J., and Woo, A., 1987. A fast voxel traversal algorithm for ray tracing. In
Proceedings of Eurographics '87, G. Marechal, Ed. Elsevier North-Holland, New York, 1987,
3-10.
 
 Axelsson, P., 2000. DEM generation from laser scanner data using adaptive TIN models.
The International Archives of the Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, Vol. XXXIII, Part B4/1, pp. 110-117.
 
 Batty, M., 2001. Exploring isovist fields: space and shape in architectural and urban
morphology. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 28, pp. 123-150.
 
 Benedikt, M. L., 1979. To take hold of space: isovists and isovist fields. Environment and
Planning B, 6, pp. 47 – 65.
 
 P. D. Riggs and D. J. Dean. An Investigation into the Causes of Errors and Inconsistencies
in Predicted Viewsheds, Transactions in GIS, 11(2):175–196, 2007.
 
 Fisher, P. F., 1995. An exploration of probable viewsheds in landscape planning,

 Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 22, pp. 527 –546.
 
THANKS