Ray Tracing And Bound Block Elimination Methods For Viewshed Analysis With Efficiency Enhancements Through Radial Segmentation And Parallel Processing

Visibility analysis plays a key role in spatial planning and environmental protection, enabling the assessment of the impact of activities and supporting decision-making processes. The most accurate results in visibility analysis are obtained using point clouds from LiDAR technology, which are currently the most precise representations of the land surface. However, processing such data is computationally demanding and presents significant technological challenges. This article compares two methods of determining visibility: the classic ray tracing approach and an algorithm operating on a point cloud. Special attention is given to techniques that speed up the computation, such as parallel processing and dividing the point cloud into radial sectors. The accuracy and computational efficiency of the two methods were analysed, as well as their potential applications in practice. The results show that using radial partitioning significantly increases computational efficiency. A speed-up of 179\% was achieved for the method using 200 sectors and 405\% for a 300-sector split compared to a 100-sector split. The research presented here provides important insights for optimising visibility analysis in high-detail environments. The results obtained have relevance for the development of advanced decision-support tools in urban planning, environmental protection and other fields requiring precise spatial analysis.