Abstract
An important task in terrain analysis is computing viewsheds. A viewshed is the union of all the parts of the terrain that are visible from a given viewpoint or set of viewpoints. The complexity of a viewshed can vary significantly depending on the terrain topography and the viewpoint position.
In this work we study a new topographic attribute, the prickliness, that measures the number of local maxima in a terrain from all possible angles of view. We show that the prickliness effectively captures the potential of terrains to have high complexity viewsheds. We present near-optimal algorithms to compute it for TIN terrains, and efficient approximate algorithms for raster DEMs. We validate the usefulness of the prickliness attribute with experiments in a large set of real terrains.
In this work we study a new topographic attribute, the prickliness, that measures the number of local maxima in a terrain from all possible angles of view. We show that the prickliness effectively captures the potential of terrains to have high complexity viewsheds. We present near-optimal algorithms to compute it for TIN terrains, and efficient approximate algorithms for raster DEMs. We validate the usefulness of the prickliness attribute with experiments in a large set of real terrains.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | 11th International Conference on Geographic Information Science (GIScience 2021) |
| Editors | Krzysztof Janowicz, Judith A. Verstegen |
| Publisher | Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik |
| Pages | 10:1-10:16 |
| Volume | 2 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-3-95977-208-2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2021 |
Publication series
| Name | Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs) |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik |
| Volume | 208 |
| ISSN (Print) | 1868-8969 |
Keywords
- Digital elevation model
- Triangulated irregular network
- Viewshed complexity