| Summary: | A rule-based expert system was developed to evaluate landscape quality from the perspective of a landscape designer/architect. The rationale for the development of such a system is that it can provide explanations for final assessments and retain this information during the reasoning process. The system also provides for systematic consideration of a broad range of variables with complex interrelationships. The entire system is composed of four subsystems programmed in VPI PROLOG. These subsystems are each separate expert systems for the assessment of <u>man-made features</u>, <u>natural features</u>, <u>spatial organization</u> and <u>visual composition</u>. The prototype of the system has been preliminarily tested and the results of the evaluation of selected landscape photographs is encouraging. The visual quality determination along with the explicit explanations, which are the translation and interpretation of the expert rules used in the reasoning process, were shown to be important in achieving a better understanding and evaluation of the landscape visual quality. === Master of Science
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