Advancing visibility modelling algorithms for urban environments

This paper presents a number of methods for calculating the visibility of landmark features in the urban context. While current visibility modelling techniques establish which regions may be viewed from a location, it is sometimes necessary to quantify how much of a designated feature is visible from its surroundings. This is particularly relevant in the field of Location Based Services, where information is currently filtered using proximity and syntax matching, but could include more advanced egocentric and contextual filtering capabilities if feature visibility modelling was available. This research presents a method to establish the visible extents of landmarks in an urban environment, through the development of a number of visual metrics. These metrics are tested in both synthetic and real world trials. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.