Determining the observation point with largest viewshed

[ToryElmore]

I am looking for the optimal location to place a radio repeater on a 25,000 acre preserve. Therefore, I need to determine a point with the largest viewshed of the property that is within a 1/4-mile buffer of a hiking trail or road.I have layers for the preserve boundaries, DEM, trails/roads, and a 1/4-mile buffer all laid out, but I am unsure how to proceed. I know there are viewshed and observer point tools, but I am not certain how to use them to my desired end.

[ToryElmore]

First, I used Flow Direction and then Flow Accumulation to identify ridgelines. I converted all pixels where flow accumulation = 0 to a point shapefile, then split the shapefile into individual points using Split Layer By Attributes. I built a model to iterate each point shapefile through the Viewshed tool, then to convert to the resulting rasters into polygon shapefiles. I merged all of the polygon shapefiles and selected for only the viewshed polygons. I clipped the polygon shapefile to my preserve boundary layer and added an Area_Acres field to the attribute table and calculated the geometry for each polygon. I selected for the 6 polygons with an area larger than 8,000 acres, and send the resulting polygons and corresponding observer points to the Preserve Manager. Success!

[ToryElmore]

Here is a picture of the sample output

[ChrisDonohue__GISP]

Another idea:

Besides Viewshed, look into Visibility (Spatial Analyst).  I have not used this tool, but it seems to have much of the functionality of Viewshed but with some added functions.  Using an analysis type set to Frequency may be the way to go.

ArcGIS Help (10.2, 10.2.1, and 10.2.2)

Chris Donohue, GISP