LiDAR-based method for analysing landmark visibility to pedestrians in cities : case study in Kraków, Poland

We propose a method for analysing landmark visibility from a pedestrian’s perspective. A case study is performed in Kraków, a city with many architectural monuments, where airborne LiDAR is used to model both buildings and urban greenery. The proposed method involves preliminary and detailed stages. The preliminary stage entails an inverse analysis (I-Vis) that departs from the typical visibility analysis to enable the use of landmarks as observers instead of targets. I-Vis results in paths with high landmark visibility. The detailed stage involves the use of a virtual panorama (V-Pan) to determine the visual exposure of the landmarks. Landmarks considered visible by I-Vis are generally consistent with landmarks identified by V-Pan. Discrepancies occur when trees appear in the near field-of-view. In addition, the accuracy of the skyline length and visible landmark surface area is evaluated against ground observations. The obtained results show that V-Pan can evaluate landmark visibility with an accuracy of approximately 75%. The key contributions of the work to visibility analysis of urban landmarks are in the inverse viewshed strategy and evaluation of the visual exposure parameters on LiDAR virtual panoramas.