3D Visualization Blauen

Implementation and added value of 3D landscape visualizations in participatory workshops

Description

Assessing the landscape quality is based on a society’s long-term requirements. Different stakeholders have diverging priorities concerning the offer of a landscape’s ecosystem services such as identification and recreation, food production or nature protection. Therefore, a negotiation process is necessary in order to reach consensus with regard to future landscape development with high quality from different perspectives. What is the added value of 3D landscape visualizations as instrument for supporting the dialogue between different actors?

Context:
The community Blauen (BL) is conducting a land consolidation and in parallel establishing a landscape development concept and zoning plan landscape. The “new” image of the landscape is elaborated in a participative process. As this “new” image can hardly be communicated to lay people using texts, maps and drawings, we apply GIS-based 3D landscape visualizations of possible development scenarios.

Goals and methods:
Goal of the project was to identify the value of 3D visualizations applying social-empirical methods. We investigated how far 3D visualizations support the understanding of different stakeholder perspectives and help to develop optimized alternatives that integrate different stakeholder’s priorities.

Significance:
The results show that the visualizations supported the identification of preferences for certain development directions and landscape elements, which are highly valued by the people. This is of interest for further development of the Swiss agricultural direct payment system, which is going to address agricultural services that the people actually request. The implementation of 3D landscape visualizations in cooperative workshops has high potential to enhance the efficiency of this direct payment system.