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The general aim of this paper is to evaluate the influence of panning on the map user’s (attentive) behaviour, using a mixed methods approach. A user study was conducted in which participants – with an expertise in cartography – had to execute four tasks in Google Maps, using only a panning operation. During the first two tasks, participants had to follow a predefined route; during the latter two tasks they had to locate Belgium on a less detailed scale level. A strong task-related interactive behaviour was revealed by the participants’ mouse action and eye movements. Furthermore, the attentive behaviour was influenced by the type of view (map or satellite) and whether it occurs while performing the panning operation. The georeferenced eye movements were imported in a GIS for spatial analysis. Based on these spatial queries, we discovered that the duration of the fixations was associated by their location on the map. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We analyze if the visual exploration of landscape photographs is influenced by the urbanization level of the landscape and whether this is correlated with visual landscape complexity. We determine if differences in viewing behavior are related to differences in complexity, expressed by the photograph's spectral entropy. An eye-tracking experiment is conducted to measure visual behavior while observing the photographs. A more extensive and dispersed exploration is found in more urbanized landscapes. The fixation pattern is more restricted and clustered in weakly urbanized landscapes. When buildings are lacking, this trend cannot be extrapolated since these landscapes seem to elicit an unexpectedly extensive exploration. The urbanization level is positively correlated with the visual complexity, indicating its potential influence on the viewing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we analyse how well saliency maps, which are theoretical predictions of the human viewing pattern, are correlated with human focus maps, obtained by tracking 42 observer's eyes while free-viewing landscape photographs ranging from rural to urban environments. The Pearson's correlation coefficient was calculated on the predicted and measured pixels’ greyscale values. A relatively high correlation was obtained, indicating that the saliency maps can be used as reliable predictions of the human observation pattern and thus can predict which elements in a landscape will catch the attention. These findings are useful in visual impact assessment, a step in the planning process which is often not well elaborated or even skipped. Saliency maps could, for instance, be used to compare the conspicuity of different designs of a construction when simulated in photographs of the original landscape. As the visual impact of an object is reduced when its visual perception decreases, the least salient design will also have the lowest visual impact and will correspond to the best integration into the existing landscape. This method is easy and produces an objective measure of the degree of visual impact. However, as slight differences in correlation depending on the degree of urbanisation of the landscape were found, this methodology will not be equally reliable in all types of landscapes. Predictions of the viewing pattern in rural landscapes with a limited amount of buildings have been demonstrated to be most reliable. In more urbanised landscapes this reliability slightly decreases but nevertheless remains significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does expertise in landscape related issues influence the way landscapes are observed? In an eye tracking experiment 21 landscape experts and 21 laymen were asked to observe 74 landscape photographs, each for 10 s. Experts seemed to make significantly more fixations and saccades, had a longer scan path and a larger visual span than the laymen. As a consequence, in the same amount of time, experts visually explored the landscape photographs to a wider extent and in a more global and holistic fashion. This is probably due to the presence of expertise, which seemed to enhance efficient information extraction, enabling experts to interpret and understand the landscapes more easily. In contrast, the laymen's visual exploration of the landscapes was considerably more restricted as they spent significantly more time and attention to singular objects, in particular to buildings. This behaviour may be a result of the lack of expertise, which makes longer fixation times necessary to understand the meaning of the composing landscape elements. A slower information processing leaves less time to visually explore the landscape photograph and hampers laymen to observe the landscape as a whole. Consequently, experts and laymen may not perceive the same features in a landscape and might not even see the same landscape. This conclusion is important for participatory landscape management in which experts and laymen are asked to visually assess landscapes. The often diverging assessments of both groups could partially be explained by their literally different view on landscapes, on which their judgement is based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Landscape Convention emphasises the need for public participation in landscape planning and management. This demands understanding of how people perceive and observe landscapes. This can objectively be measured using eye tracking, a system recording eye movements and fixations while observing images. In this study, 23 participants were asked to observe 90 landscape photographs, representing 18 landscape character types in Flanders (Belgium) differing in degree of openness and heterogeneity. For each landscape, five types of photographs were shown, varying in view angle. This experiment design allowed testing the effect of the landscape characteristics and photograph types on the observation pattern, measured by Eye-tracking Metrics (ETM). The results show that panoramic and detail photographs are observed differently than the other types. The degree of openness and heterogeneity also seems to exert a significant influence on the observation of the landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]