Novel Techniques for Anticipating the Focus of Visual Attention across Different Mining Landscapes

Surface mining activities support socioeconomic development but also cause significant landscape alteration and degradation. By definition, the concept of landscape requires observers; thus, the way mining landscapes are actually observed needs to be taken into consideration for mitigating visual nuisance from open pit mines. This paper utilizes eye tracking techniques for recording and rendering the actual attention patterns of observers, along with saliency models that ‘predict’ the focus of attention in mining landscape photographs. As it turns out, saliency models can aid in reliably anticipating the attention focus across a range of different mining landscapes.