Towards a Spatial Semantics to Analyze the Visual Dynamics of the Pedestrian Mobility in the Urban Fabric

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of visual ambiences (visualscape) onto an urban pedestrian pathway. This work takes place within the interdisciplinary research project called Ambioflux, dealing with the sustainable mobility issues in the city. We add to the spatial semantic layer GDMS (Generic Datasource Management System) an innovative method based on partial isovists fields in order to compute the visibility of the pedestrian all along his pathway. This method allows "concatenating" several partial visibility polygons in order to represents the visual perception of the pedestrian. After a brief overview of the visibility analysis context, we justify the need of a specific semantic tool to develop the type of dynamics visual analysis we focus on. The remainder of this paper is dedicated to the methodology of the mobile pedestrian pathway's visual fingerprint characterization using the spatial formalism already described. At last, we present a use case based on a real city tour so as to identify the best rotation's direction from the visual perception point of view.