Evaluating Suitable Analysis Methods Using Digital Terrain in Viewshed Analysis

Exploring multiple viewshed analysis using terrain features and optimisation techniques

The calculation of viewsheds is a routine operation in GIS and is used in a wide range of applications. Many of these involve the siting of features, such as radio masts, which are part of a network and yet the selection of sites is normally done separately for each feature. The selection of a series of locations which collectively maximise the visual coverage of an area is a combinatorial prob...

Digital Terrain Analysis

The development and application of the TAPES: Terrain Analysis Programs for the Environmental Sciences software tools described in this book was motivated by our view of the world as a stage on which a series of hierarchically scaled biophysical processes are played out (Figure 1.1). This approach is useful because it can handle the complexity of individual landscape processes and patterns as w...

A parallel computing approach to viewshed analysis of large terrain data using graphics processing units

Viewshed analysis, often supported by Geographic Information Systems (GIS), is widely used in many application domains. However, as terrain data continue to become increasingly large and available at high resolutions, data-intensive viewshed analysis poses significant computational challenges. General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU) provides a promising means to address...

Terrain Analysis Using Digital Elevation Models in Hydrology

This paper describes methods that use digital elevation models (DEMs) in hydrology, implemented as an ArcGIS toolbar using Visual Basic and the ESRI object library. I describe generalized channel network delineation to objectively estimate drainage density and by using terrain curvature accommodate spatially variable drainage density. The multiple flow direction field determined from a DEM also...

Digital Elevation Model Error in Terrain Analysis