Visualising rural landscapes from GIS databases: A comparison of approaches, options and problems

As public participation in environmental decision-making becomes more prevalent, there is a growing need to communicate effectively with a non-expert audience. Visual presentation has been identified as an effective means of communicating landscape-related information, particularly due to the increasing ease with which computer visualisation techniques can utilise GIS data. Such data are already widely used when assessing environmental and landscape issues, and there are several different ways in which visualisations may be produced; this paper sets out a typology encompassing the most popular techniques, and, using a common GIS database, proceeds to assesses a number of different visualisation software packages. Three primary issues are considered: data needs; ease of use; and quality of output. Examples of visualisations produced in each software package are provided for comparison.