Viewshed

Viewshed identifies the areas of a surface that can be seen from one or more observation points. The input is a raster or TIN layer and the output is a new raster. Each cell in the viewshed raster stores the number of observers who can see it.

Green cells are visible from the red point, pink cells are not..

The observation points can be features in a point layer or feature vertices in a line layer.

Viewshed parameters

Viewshed analysis assumes that the observer’s field of view has no horizontal or vertical constraints nor any distance limits.

You can control these parameters and others by adding fields with specific names to the attribute table of the observation layer. The field names and the effects they have are summarized in the chart below.

Viewshed analysis calculates the area on a surface visible from one or more observation points. Parameters typically can be set to control the vertical and horizontal field of view, the height of the observer and target cells, and the view radius.