Visibility of multiple points from one other point?

Question

I am fairly new to GIS and am struggling a little with one of my maps.

I have to see if 49 wind turbines (200m) are visible from a radar that is 39.6m high, I understand I need to do viewshed but have no idea what to put in each of the boxes. The area being used is a hilly area in Scotland so obviously this will have an impact.

I am using ArcMap 10.5 and so far have all of my turbines plotted and the radar.

What are the next steps to see if the turbines are visible from the radar?

I don't need the radar scope I essentially need to see if there is visibility between numerous points.

Answer 1

What you need to do is to calculate viewshed from the location of the radar to the surrounding area. If you are using ArcMAP then you can use Viewshed tool with following settings: observer features - point location of the radar, OFFSETA - height of radar above surface, OFFSETB - height of wind turbines above surface. Don't forget to include curvature correction if necessary (roughly distances over 5km). After that you can just extract values from visibility raster at points (wind turbines) using tool Extract values to Points.

Alternatively, you can use my Line of Sight Analyst toolbox (https://jancaha.github.io/Line-of-Sight-Analyst/) to calculate the visibility on point to point basis. The toolbox can also provide some additional information about the visibility (see the manual - https://jancaha.github.io/Line-of-Sight-Analyst/assets/files/Line_of_Sight_Analyst.pdf). The toolbox is likely to provide the information that you want in more useful manner.