Exploring eye-tracking as an innovative tool for landscape planning

Landscape planning, which focuses on the management of existing landscapes and the creation of new landscapes, not only affects the functioning of the ecosystems, it also alters the visual aspects of the landscape. Often, planned landscape changes and new developments are evaluated beforehand using landscape visualizations in which the plans are simulated. Besides querying how the adapted or newly created features of a landscape are evaluated, visualizations can also be used to determine how changes in a landscape are visually perceived. This is often not considered sufficiently, while it is an important part of the planning process, as landscape management and planning are inextricably linked to perception. A relatively novel technology which allows to objectively measure how landscapes are observed is eye-tracking. By registering an observer’s point of regard as well as the eye movements made while viewing landscape visualizations, it is possible to identify which (new) features in a landscape catch the attention and which do not. Questionnaires can be used to gain insight as to why this is the case. This combination offers broad perspectives to evaluate the visual impact of new landscape developments. The results of eye-tracking experiments can be statistically analyzed and visualized using heat maps. This paper presents an overview of the application of eye-tracking in landscape perception research so far. The question is raised how this technique could offer solutions for evaluating visual aspects in landscape planning processes and environmental impact assessments.