Dear Drew,
thank you very much for your email and the pointer to your thesis. I 
will have a look at it.
I wonder if you found about my research from the recent talk of Alex 
Klippel at UCSB or just through the web.
I am currently exploring the usability of space syntax measures (which I 
found weakly defined and terminologically inconsistent with many of the 
traditional network analysis papers, unfortunately...). I will be 
looking at the connectivity in the network to reconstruct a more natural 
hierarchy of the network to be used in granular route directions.
As you say, axial maps have a mjor problem with the definition of the 
vista spaces. These can further be inconsistent in time (seasons vs. 
foliage, temporarily obstructions,...), further problems arise from the 
handling of the intersections of the vistas (I think this is not only my 
problem, but how do you vectorize your axial map :)) tripple 
intersections are a mess!, and these are still simple ones...). length 
of the vista space, + you can look at the use of 3D models, terrain 
models, angle of sight,... but hey, one cannot solve all the world 
problems... :)

Please, keep me up to date with your progress, I will be glad to discuss 
mine as well.
Kind regards
Martin

----------------------------------------------
Ing. Martin Tomko
PhD. candidate

CRC for Spatial Information
Department of Geomatics
University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010
Australia

phone +61 3 8344 9179
fax   +61 3 9349 5185
email [log in to unmask]
url   http://www.geom.unimelb.edu.au/tomko
url   http://www.spatialinformationscience.org
url   http://www.crcsi.com.au
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Drew Dara-Abrams wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Last year I completed a senior thesis that uses the case study of an 
> American college campus to compare space syntax measures of urban form 
> with behavioral measures of spatial judgment and memory. I found that 
> the global integration of a location on the campus predicts students' 
> accuracy at recalling that location when asked under controlled 
> conditions. The document is available on-line as a PDF, along with a 
> brief summary handout, a demo of the spatial judgment and memory tasks, 
> and the axial map that I used:
> 
> http://drew.dara-abrams.com/research/
> 
> I would appreciate any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.
> 
> I am currently revising this work at University of California, Santa 
> Barbara, and readying it for publication. While preparing to run the 
> study on this campus, I have been wondering about how to best use axial 
> maps and visibility graphs to characterize outdoor settings that are not 
> simply open streets and solid buildings. For instance, the university 
> campuses that I am considering are filled with landscaping as well as 
> roadways, some of which can be walked across and some of which cannot be 
> traversed but can be seen across. I am planning on doing two sets of 
> models, one that describes spaces that are accessible/can be walked 
> across and a second that describes spaces that are visible/can be seen. 
> As I am doing this, I am trying to assemble some rough guidelines for 
> which physical features to ignore and which to include in space syntax 
> models when "ground truthing" CAD plans, but I don't want to duplicate 
> work that may have been done previously. I would greatly appreciate any 
> literature references or other suggestions on methodology.
> 
> Thank you for your time,
> Drew Dara-Abrams
>