Katy Appleton

GIS-based visualisation of rural landscapes: defining ‘sufficient’ realism for environmental decision-making

Abstract Visual communication is an increasingly common part of environmental decision-making, being used as a ‘common currency’ to facilitate dialogue between policymakers and non-experts, increase understanding, and thereby improve the decisions made. GIS-based landscape visualisation is one method of producing images for consultation exercises, and while continuing advances in technology allow expansion into new areas such as the visualisation of rural landscapes, there is considerable feeling that we should not allow ourselves to be guided simply by what the technology can do. Instead, we should carefully assess whether each of these increases in capability can enhance the usefulness of visualisations. The need for a critical eye is particularly apparent when considering the advances in realism, since opportunities for realistic visualisations are rarely matched by the availability of suitably detailed data, and viewers’ perceptions of factors such as accuracy and certainty are also affected by the level of realism in an image. Following suggestions in the literature, the research described here attempts to determine whether there might be a ‘sufficient’ level of realism somewhat below the maximum possible level, and also begins to investigate the relative importance of various elements within an image such as buildings and foreground vegetation. Several visualisations of English rural scenes, with elements at varying levels of detail, were rated by survey respondents according to how well they felt they communicated the appearance of the landscape. The results do not show evidence of a ‘sufficient’ level of realism, but strongly indicate that some elements are more important than others. Foreground vegetation and the appearance of the ground surface over the whole scene were found to have significant effects on ratings, although the precise effect varied between the three scenes used, and much variation in ratings was not accounted for.

GIS-based visualisation of development proposals: Reactions from planning and related professionals

Public participation has been recognised as a desirable element of the planning process, but traditional consultation and communication methods have not always been able to engage a sufficiently broad cross-section of the public to be truly representative. One factor behind this is the relative complexity of much of the information used in the planning process, and the difficulty of presenting it to a lay audience. Visual communication is a well-established way of trying to overcome this barrier, and while computer visualisation, particularly that based on GIS databases, is a fast-emerging part of that field, relatively little research has been done to investigate how an audience might relate to such images, and what factors might influence them. The research behind this paper attempts to identify the most important issues regarding the use of such visualisations with the public, using a set of visualisations for a real project in Norwich, UK, with a series of interviews with planners and other related professionals.

Rural landscape visualisation from GIS databases: a comparison of approaches, options and problems

As public participation in environmental decision-making becomes more prevalent, there is a growing need to communicate effectively with a non-expert audience. Visual presentation has been identified as an effective means of communicating landscape-related information, particularly due to the increasing ease with which computer visualisation techniques can utilise GIS data. Such data are already widely used when assessing environmental and landscape issues, and there are several different ways in which visualisations may be produced; this paper sets out a typology encompassing the most popular techniques, and, using a common GIS database, proceeds to assesses a number of different visualisation software packages. Three primary issues are considered: data needs; ease of use; and quality of output. Examples of visualisations produced in each software package are provided for comparison.

Visualising the potential impacts of climate change on rural landscapes

Climate change is an issue that will increasingly require policy consideration, but for which knowledge and information at the local or landscape scale is either lacking or largely inaccessible. This paper explores the possibility of reinterpreting climate impacts information and presenting it through GIS-based visualisations in a manner that might assist decision-making at the local level. A GIS database was constructed for an agricultural landscape in Norfolk. Future land-use changes under climate change scenario for the 2020s, provided by a land use allocation model at 1 km grid-square resolution, were downscaled to the field-level database using a series of decision rules. The predicted land use changes were then visualised using photorealistic image rendering software. As a technical exercise this work illustrates the extent of recent advances in GIS-based visualisation, but it is also recognised that there needs to be further work on a range of topics (including impact assessment methodologies, the representation of uncertainty and design guidelines) if such images are to be widely used as a information provision and decision support tool in relation to climate change.

Public opinion on energy crops in the landscape: considerations for the expansion of renewable energy from biomass.

Public attitudes were assessed towards two dedicated biomass crops – Miscanthus and Short Rotation Coppice (SRC), particularly regarding their visual impacts in the landscape. Results are based on responses to photographic and computer-generated images as the crops are still relatively scarce in the landscape. A questionnaire survey indicated little public concern about potential landscape aesthetics but more concern about attendant built infrastructure. Focus group meetings and interviews indicated support for biomass end uses that bring direct benefits to local communities. Questions arise as to how well the imagery used was able to portray the true nature of these tall, dense, perennial plants but based on the responses obtained and given the caveat that there was limited personal experience of the crops, it appears unlikely that wide-scale planting of biomass crops will give rise to substantial public concern in relation to their visual impact in the landscape.

Modelling land-use scenarios to reduce groundwater nitrate pollution: the European Water4All project

The Water4All project funded by the EU InterregIIIB programme aimed to demonstrate groundwater protection in the context of spatial planning and the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive. Through a series of workshops, the four partner countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK) developed a handbook containing an approach for risk-based land and water management to reduce diffuse pollution of groundwater from agricultural sources. Best practice guidelines were catalogued as a matrix of compensated and non-compensated ‘soft’ to ‘hard’ measures and were supported by illustrative case studies. The Water4All project also showed that spatially targeted measures can have wider benefits as part of a ‘whole landscape’ approach to planning and management. As an example, this paper explores a set of theoretical land-use scenarios, developed in consultation with stakeholders, which could potentially decrease nitrate concentrations in the regionally important Lincolnshire Limestone aquifer in eastern England. The results of a combined export coefficient and numerical groundwater modelling approach showed that a decrease in groundwater nitrate concentrations can be achieved over several decades with the implementation of a groundwater protection zone in which there is a significant element of land conversion from arable to woodland and grass. Hence, a long-term commitment to land management is required if the alternative and expensive end-of-pipe water treatment is to be avoided.