Viewshed Analysis is an important tool in the study of digital terrain visibility. Current methods rely on the CPU performing computations to linearly calculate visibility for a given position on a portion of digital terrain. The viewshed analysis process can be sped up through the use of a GPU to parallelize the visibility algorithms. This paper presents a novel conversion of the XDraw viewshed analysis algorithm to a parallel context in an effort to increase the speed at which a viewshed can be rendered. The algorithm executed faster than current linear methods and responded well to parallelization. We conclude that XDraw is applicable for GIS applications when rendered in a parallel context.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	GPU, viewshed, algorithm, XDraw
Research Division:	Information and Computing Sciences
Research Group:	Theory of computation
Research Field:	Computational complexity and computability
Objective Division:	Expanding Knowledge
Objective Group:	Expanding knowledge
Objective Field:	Expanding knowledge in the environmental sciences
UTAS Author:	Cauchi-Saunders, AJ (Mr Aran Cauchi-Saunders)
UTAS Author:	Lewis, IJ (Dr Ian Lewis)
ID Code:	102064
Year Published:	2015
Web of Science® Times Cited:	12
Deposited By:	Information and Communication Technology
Deposited On:	2015-07-27
Last Modified:	2017-11-20
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