Visual Analysis

Salzburg is a touristic city of Austria and encapsulates natural and artificial heritage. Being surrounded by hills, we can view the beauty of the whole city from the top of the Hill. With this, we purpose a view tower to construct on the top of Kapuzinerberg. Representing the City of Music, maybe the tower can be constructed as Giant Violin of 15m tall with several floors and each floor showcasing the culture of Austria from Music to Science. The main purpose of the tower will be to get a wonderful view of the city.

For the construction of such a tower, several factors need to be taken into consideration such as the best view of the city, preservation of the cultural and natural sites, job opportunities etc. Therefore, a visual impact analysis is needed to determine the impact.

Based on experience, availability of land and several other socio-economic factors a location was chosen on Kapuzinerberg as shown in the map aside.

As a first step, a simple line-of-sight was analyzed from the top of the tower. Looking approximately around Kapunzinerberg, we try to find out how far is it visible from the top and vice-versa. Using the ArcGIS Line of Sight tool, multiple lines were calculated to determine the intervisibility between the tower and the main targeted points. These targeted points are few main junctions of the city. With the tower height of 15m and 10m DEM as elevation input, a colour-coded line-of-sight as shown in the image below was visualized. Here minimum distance was set as 3m and maximum being 2km; visible ranges are coded as green, non-visible with the red and yellow line is the sight lie that is out of range.

For an in-depth understanding of the area that can be visualized within the city of the Salzburg from the tower, a simple Viewshed is generated. This will give an idea of the view they will be covered from the tower and accordingly will help showcase the work specifically on that floor. In this process, the Viewshed tool was used for determining the viewshed from the area with a DEM of 10m resolution from 5m tower and 15m tower respectively.  

In the viewshed map, the green area represents the visible part of the city from the tower whereas red is the not-visible part. From this viewshed, we can say that most of the area of Salzburg is Visible with the 15m height than that of 5m height tower. The defined height of tower could also be the determining reason as we know that with the increase in height of the tower, visibility will also increase resulting in the impact of areas that might be obscured when a low height is defined.  

To study the impact that may occur due to the construction of the tower in the area of interest, the Salzburg Land Zone layer was overlayered with the location of the tower. The Salzburg Zoning map was obtained through ZGIS data collection from the  Salzburg Open Data Portal . It was observed that the purposed area is categorized as a recreational zone which suggests that the place could be a great attraction for both internal and external tourist.

Also since the area is seprated for recreational there is no destruction of settlement but it can be assumed that since the area has mixed residential in its surrounding handcraft industry and other small scale tourism activities around the tower can benifit the population in these areass.

We purpose for the construction of a Cultural Violin Tower on the top of Kapuzinerberg in Salzburg City to contribute towards tourism. To analyze the visual impact, an analysis was carried out with the use of several ArcGIS tools. To be able to view the entire city from the tower a height of 15m is purposed. This report is intended to give a clear and concise view of the idea based on the analysis performed.

With the Viewshed generated, it was observed that most of the city can be viewed from the tower, also the tower being the tallest building will be attracting both internal and external tourist, contributing to the socio-economic development of the locals. Therefore, it is highly recommended to take into consideration, the construction of the Violin Tower not just for tourism but also to showcase the contribution of Salzburg residents to the world in different domains.