Visual assessment and relational database management

Protection of the visual environment begins with a comprehensive documentation and evaluation of existing conditions followed by the development of guidelines pertaining to future alterations. This thesis examines existing methods of visual assessment and the needs of the land planner for the purpose of understanding the necessary components of evaluating the visual environment effectively. The objective has been to develop a new method of visual documentation and evaluation that can be utilized by land planners for the visual assessment of road corridors.

In order to achieve this objective, a visual assessment of a Significant road corridor in Blacksburg, Virginia has been conducted. Various necessary components have been included in the assessment and a relational database management program has been used in the storage of all collected data. As a result of this process, it was found that a new method, which borrows from past processes, addresses the needs of the land planner, and utilizes an interactive medium for storage of data, is successful in addressing the objective. The new method has been successful in including the necessary components such as qualitative evaluation with adaptive descriptive nomenclature and photographic documentation of the existing corridor.

The database has many qualities which are meaningful to land planners. Relational database management programs have the capability of storing text as well as photographs. For land planners to view the various aspects of the corridor, a simple pressing of their computer mouse button moves the them from one aspect to another.