Mitigating Urban Visual Pollution through a Multistakeholder Spatial Decision Support System to Optimize Locational Potential of Billboards

Abstract

Urban visual pollution is increasingly affecting the built-up areas of the rapidly urbanizing planet. Outdoor advertisements are the key visual pollution objects affecting the visual pollution index and revenue generation potential of a place. Current practices of uninformed and uncontrolled outdoor advertising (especially billboards) impairs effective control of visual pollution in developing countries. Improving this can result in over 20% reduction of visual pollution. This article presents a spatial decision support system (SDSS) to facilitate all the stakeholders (development control authorities, advertisers, billboard owners, and the public) in balancing the optimal positioning of billboards under the governing regulations. In terms of its technical implementation, SDSS is based on well-known geospatial open source technologies and uses an analytical hierarchy process AHP-inspired approach in spatial decision-making. It can help users through its category-specific user interface to identify potential sites to position new billboards and the selection of boards from existing sites based on a wide variety of characteristics. The observations of all stakeholders have been recorded through panel feedback to assess the system’s initial effectiveness. The proposed system has been found functional in identifying hot spots for the focused management and exploration of the best suitable sites for new billboards. So, it helps the advertising agencies, urban authorities, and city councils in better planning and management of existing billboard locations to optimize revenue and improve urban aesthetics. The system can be replicated in other countries irrespective of spatial boundaries by incorporating jurisdictional rules and regulations.

Safe Construction And Visual Pollution Of Billboards Along Main Street

“…After the internal factors are investigated, the most important factors are noted. The sum of these factors should be in the range (10,20). These factors should include the organization's most important strengths and weaknesses (Allahyari et al, 2017).…”

“…Among the methods used is the use of GIS which is often used on two sides of conflicting interests. On the one hand, GIS is used to support the advertising business, on the other hand, GIS is used by government agencies in advertising layout planning which reduces the number of advertisements installed (Wakil et al, 2021). But on other occasions it can also help to make a plan in determining a point that has high economic value as well as helping to layout the ad layout that gives maximum beauty value.…”

“…The use of the AHP fuzzy method is considered to have a logic that provides analytical power for evaluating complex decision criteria that will be more accurate. Meanwhile, Delphi's real-time spatial method has the advantage of determining the location of the occurrence of existing physical phenomena or a suitable location that experts can use in the future (Wakil et al, 2021). In the Urmia study, a SWOT analysis was carried out to assess the quality of the visual landscape, namely:…”

“…One of the methods used to reduce visual pollution is the spatial decision support system (SDSS), which is a method by providing a forum or forum for all stakeholders (urban governments, advertising business actors, billboard owners, and the community) to discuss and formulate a rule in managing the existence of billboards proportionally, wisely and based on local wisdom. For technical implementation, SDSS is based on existing infrastructure at the location and uses an analytic hierarchical process (Wakil et al, 2021). The appearance of an environment that can be captured by the senses (visual) requires a planning and management through an assessment system.…”

Influence of outdoor advertisements on architecture in the City of Lublin

“…For decades, outdoor advertising has troubled the professionals all over the world [7]- [11]. Excessive presence of advertisements in towns and cities has been causing controversies, and it stems from the absence of clear legal regulations.…”