Measuring Visible Space to Assess Landscape Openness

This paper presents and discusses a procedure for measuring landscape openness, which is an important characteristic of the visual landscape. The procedure aims to ensure the quality of descriptions of landscape openness while being flexible enough to produce descriptions suitable for various purposes. Geo-data and a Geographic Information System (GIS) are used to develop the procedure, which consists of five steps: 1) select road network and apply sampling strategy; 2) merge terrain and topographic datasets and create contour lines; 3) identify visual limitations; 4) compute visible space; and 5) select and calculate variables. The procedure is applied to a case study to illustrate the possibilities. The paper includes a discussion of the realism, generality, precision and sensitivity of the procedure. The balance between a high degree of realism and a high degree of generality ensures a procedure which can be used by policy-makers and planners for a wide range of purposes at various levels.