Total Viewshed of Bohemia

The dataset represents a collection of total viewsheds (cf. Llobera et al. 2010) created for the territory of Bohemia (Czech Republic; ca. 57,000 km2). The total-viewshed calculation was based on the R2 algorithm (see Franklin and Ray 1994) and uses the viewshed function from MATLAB’s Mapping Toolbox that was significantly optimized by the authors for large-scale parallel computations. To reduce the computational time, we calculated single viewsheds using every fourth cell as the observing point (cf. Rášová 2017).

The Digital Terrain Model of the Czech Republic of the 5th Generation (DMR 5G) was used as input for the calculations. Prior to the calculation, the input DEM was cleared of modern landscape elements (e.g. embankments of railways and roads, quarries, etc.; for details see Novák – Pružinec 2022). Eight total visibility models of the territory of Bohemia were constructed using the IT4Innovations research infrastructure (https://www.it4i.cz/). Both the observer and the target heights were set at 1.5 m. The viewsheds differ in two parameters: the visibility radius and the resolution of the input grid. As the basic radius, we have set 0.5 km and the cell size of 5 m; further layers are conceived as multiples of these parameters: 1 km/10 m, 2 km/20 m, 4 km/40 m, 8 km/80 m, 16 km/160 m and 32 km/320 m. The only exception is the model with a radius of 64 km, where we preserved the cell size of the preceding iteration (320 m). In the individual models, the visibility values are indicated in percentages corresponding to the portion of visible cells in the given radius (0–100%; rounded up to the next complete value).

Filenames of individual rasters correspond to the parameters set above. For further details see:

Kuna, M. – Novák, D. – Bucha Rašová, A. – Bucha, B. – Machová, B. – Havlice, J. – John, J. – Chvojka, O. 2022: Computing and testing extensive total viewsheds: a case of prehistoric burial mounds in Bohemia. Journal of Archaeological Science 142, 105596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2022.105596

Novák, D. – Pružinec, F. 2022: Potential and Implications of Automated Pre-Processing of Lidar-Based Digital Elevation Models for Large-Scale Archaeological Landscape Analysis. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4063514