Viewscapes and Flood Hazard: Coastal Housing Market Response to Amenities and Risk

Integrating lidar, GIS and hedonic price modeling to measure amenity values in urban beach residential property markets

“…Based on this result, we estimate that decreasing distance from each property to the nearest access point by 1 m increases property values by approximately $1119. Bin et al (2008) also separate viewshed and access but use a conventional linear shoreline distance measure for access in coastal community property markets across North Carolina. They find that a ten yard decrease in linear distance to the shoreline increases property values by approximately $854.…”

“…By utilizing a top-down method for recording the observer location, difficulties related to variable storied homes, homes built on pylons, and homes built on raised fill are mitigated when calculating the most desirable view observer location for viewshed analysis. Earlier studies that utilized lidar-derived view within economic models used a standard distance from the elevation of the roof to place the observer (Bin et al, 2008). This study expands on the process of using a standard offset to derive an observer location from a roof height by not assuming a common roof type, but actually using the lidar data and property data to delineate roof type, and hence adjust the offset according to the roof structure.…”

“…This method of assigning views is similar to the method utilized in Bin et al (2008) in their research into the role of viewscapes and flood hazards and Paterson and Boyle (2002) in their analysis of bare-earth viewshed in hedonic models. Fig.…”

“…As it is the relative measure of view that is critical either metric will suffice as an observer location with twice the view angle of another will have the same linear relationship in viewable area (beyond a nominal distance from the observer location). For this analysis view angle is the metric utilized as the measure of view in keeping with other measures of view in lidar derived viewscape analyses ( [Bin et al, 2008] and [Paterson and Boyle, 2002]). The 101 property viewsheds were calculated using radii of 1000 m from the spot location of each individual property.…”

“…In constructing the viewshed variable, we follow work by Paterson and Boyle (2002) and Bin, Crawford, Kruse, and Landry (2008) by using lidar data to construct a continuous measure of viewshed. As such, the viewshed parameter measures the view from each property to capture the home's aesthetic quality.…”