Realistic renderings and animations

About 80 per cent of our impression of our surroundings comes from sight. Our visual environment has verifiably multiple functions contributing to human well-being, e.g. cultural heritage, identification, recreation, and human health. Changes of the visual landscape can affect these services. Realistic renderings and animations of possible future scenic views help to assess the potential impacts and support pro-active spatial planning.

Preferences of stakeholders and the public regarding alternative development options and the valuation of various landscape services are increasingly investigated using cost-benefit analyses. Integrating 3D landscape visualizations of the landscape development options into these experiments makes an assessment of the view of the landscape possible, which is a significant landscape factor. But even more important, it reduces the error rate of these analyses. Our research addresses the enhancement of these experiments with 3D visualizations.

Ongoing projects

• Valuing avalanche protection measures using choice experiments and 3D visualization, COST Action E45 (EUROpean FORest EXternalities, EUROFOREX) (U. Wissen Hayek, K. Troxler, A. Grêt-Regamey) »»

Completed projects

• VisuLands – Visualisation tools for public participation in the management of landscape change, EU 5th Framework Programme, (U.Wissen Hayek, O.Schroth) »»