The Use of Remote Sensing to Quantitatively Assess the Visual Effect of Urban Landscape—A Case Study of Zhengzhou, China

The landscape visual effect of a city, which is generated by its long-term development, is an important index in city planning. In this study, we build a quantitative evaluation and remote sensing estimation scheme of landscape visual effect. The study contains two main steps. First, utilizing the Elo rating system and in situ sampled panoramic pictures, the quantitative assessment of the city landscape visual effect was carried out. Then, the landscape visual effect estimation model was built and applied to Landsat remote sensing image to generate the spatial distribution of landscape visual effect in Zhengzhou city, 2017. At last, the effect of different combination of land use and elevation to the landscape visual effect was discussed. The results showed the following: (1) the Elo rating system is an effective method to quantitatively evaluate the city landscape visual effect; (2) the landscape visual effect remote sensing estimation model had a good performance, with the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and root mean square error (RMSE) of the model are less than 0.05 and 80, respectively; (3) the landscape visual effect score of Zhengzhou city, 2017, was high in the southwest and low in the northeast; (4) different land use situation and average surface elevation had a complex influence on the landscape visual effect