Visualizing the perceived environment using crowdsourced photo geodata

Abstract Assessing information on aspects of identification, perception, emotion, and social interaction with respect to the environment is of particular importance to the fields of natural resource management. Our ability to visualize this type of information has rapidly improved with the proliferation of social media sites throughout the Internet in recent years. While many methods to extract information on human behavior from crowdsourced geodata already exist, this paper focuses on visualizing landscape perception for application to the fields of landscape and urban planning. Visualization of peoples’ perceptual responses to landscape is demonstrated with crowdsourced photo geodata from Flickr, a popular photo sharing community. A basic, general method to map, visualize, and evaluate perception and perceptual values is proposed. The approach utilizes common tools for spatial knowledge discovery and builds on existing research, but is specifically designed for implementation within the context of landscape perception analysis and particularly suited as a base for further evaluation in multiple scenarios. To demonstrate the process in application, three novel types of visualizations are presented: the mapping of sightlines in Yosemite Valley, the assessment of landscape change in the area surrounding the High Line in Manhattan, and individual location analysis for Coit Tower in San Francisco. The results suggest that analyzing crowdsourced data may contribute to a more balanced assessment of the perceived landscape, which provides a basis for a better integration of public values into planning processes.