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Geo Edinburgh Poster 2
Geo Edinburgh Poster 2
Geo Edinburgh Poster 2
Intervisibility
Analysis
Visibility impacts a soldiers ability to operate by
constraining his or her field of view, viewing range,
and engagement opportunities. It is a key component
of many traditional tactical decision aids, including
line-of-sight profiles and viewsheds.
Traditional tactical decision aids, while valuable, only
provide a limited understanding of the overall
visibility characteristics of the terrain. Both line-ofsight profiles and viewsheds are based on a single
observer location, so they represent a small fraction of
the overall visibility information.
To address this deficiency, University of Edinburgh
and U.S. Army researchers combined their interests in
visibility research and distributed computing to
explore the next generation of visibility products.
Local Viewshed
Cumulative Visibility
Cumulative Fragmentation
(8-Connected)
Local Fragmentation
(8-Connected)
Source Data
All images on this poster were
derived from a Complete
Intervisibility Database (CID) of a
US Geological Survey Digital
Elevation Model (DEM) covering
Southwest Harbor, Maine. The
DEM contained 466 rows and 336
columns, resulting in a CID with
156,576 viewsheds.
D.R. Caldwell
U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center
Topographic Engineering Center
7701 Telegraph Road, Alexandria, VA, 22315-3864, USA
Tel +1 703-428-3594
Fax +1 703-428-3732
Email: Douglas.R.Caldwell@erdc.usace.army.mil
M.J. Mineter, S. Dowers, and B.M. Gittings
Geography, School of GeoSciences
University of Edinburgh,
Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland
Tel +44 131 650 2662
Fax +44 131 650 2524
Email: {mjm, sd, bruce}@geo.ed.ac.uk