The reliability test of visual landscape features measurement in highlands tourism planning

Abstract

Utilizing accessible data in objective measurement of visual landscape can assist planners and landscape architects to assess and understand the landscape in a technical sense. This approach requires minimal digital physical data provided by various agencies. As with this approach, the study tests the validity of objective measurement in visual landscape using the photography method for perceptual testing in 48 test scenes. The correlations between these assessments are carried out; the result of which demonstrated that the measurement used in the study for visual landscape assessment is statistically acceptable for application with significant correlation (p<0.01) and moderate association (0.446). In the local context this study found that village is more preferable than other built up areas. The agriculture views which are dominated in the scene are preferable than the agriculture that present in the middle ground view only. It is also found the quality of the agriculture view is influenced by the condition and manageable view, whereas the combination of forest and agriculture at the foreground and middle ground is less attractive. The study has provided more reliable objective measurement of visual landscape for highlands tourism planning.