Visibility and dominance analysis: assessing a high-rise building project in Trondheim

This article presents a GIS-aided visibility and dominance analysis used for a visual-impact assessment of a planned high-rise building located in a central area in Trondheim, Norway. The visibility analysis calculates fields of intervisibility between the high-rise building and locations in the urban landscape. Visual obstacles such as existing buildings and trees are included. The dominance analysis adds to the visibility analysis a measure of how visually dominant the high-rise building would be. The dominance measure is based on the distance to the building and how much of the building would be visible from any observation point. The result is an assessment of visibility and dominance throughout the entire study area as opposed to using photomontages for assessing visibility and dominance from single standpoints.