Towards Managing Visual Pollution: A 3D Isovist and Voxel Approach to Advertisement Billboard Visual Impact Assessment

Szymon Chmielewski

doi:10.3390/ijgi10100656

Abstract

Visual pollution (VP) is a visual landscape quality issue, and its most consistently recognized symptom is an excess of out of home advertising billboards (OOHb). However, the VP related research concerns landscape aesthetic and advertisement cultural context, leaving the impact of outdoor billboard infrastructure on landscape openness unanswered to date. This research aims to assess the visual impact of outdoor billboard infrastructure on landscape openness, precisely the visual volume—a key geometrical quality of a landscape. The method uses 3D isovists and voxels to calculate the visible and obstructed subsets of visible volume. Using two case studies (Lublin City, Poland) and 26 measurement points, it was found that OOHb decreased landscape openness by at least 4% of visible volume; however, the severe impact may concern up to 35% of visual volume. GIS scientists develop the proposed method for policy-makers, and urban planners end users. It is also the very first example of compiling 3D isovists and voxels in ArcGIS Pro software in an easy-to-replicate framework. The research results, accompanied by statistically significant proofs, explain the visual landscape’s fragility and contribute to understanding the VP phenomenon.

Highlights

Defining Visual Pollution as Landsacpe’s Quality IssueVisual pollution (VP) [1], caused by the oversaturation of a landscape with anthropogenic visual information, is a recognized visual landscape quality issue [2] concerning both urban and suburban areas
Four 3D ISOVIST tests were completed, each time using four times smaller voxels to assess the impact of its size and number on resulting visible view volume (VVV) and OVV values as well as computation processing power demand
The VVV–OVV balance changes concern the vast majority (92.3%) of the measurement points; two points located at the measurement patches endings were identified with no change (Table 2)

Summary

Introduction

Defining Visual Pollution as Landsacpe’s Quality Issue. Visual pollution (VP) [1], caused by the oversaturation of a landscape with anthropogenic visual information, is a recognized visual landscape quality issue [2] concerning both urban and suburban areas. The above definition provides a general understanding of landscape physiognomy threats and vividly refers to the disharmonious urban features as “pollutants” which we want to get rid of for aesthetic reasons. This research explains that apart from landscape aesthetics, the geometrical quality of a visual landscape is threatened by the VP, the visible space volume. The research aim is to propose a research method and examine the impact of out of home advertising billboard (OOHb) on landscape openness and triggered the 3D view occlusion effect. Several research approaches to quantifying the VP phenomenon have been proposed

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Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion