Exploring the visual impact from open pit mines applying eye movement analyses on mining landscape photographs

ABSTRACTMining landscapes have been widely acknowledged to be perceptually intrusive. Yet, the way visual attention of actual observers is affected by such landscapes has not been subjected to objective examination until the present time. In this study, an eye tracking experiment is utilized for the first time in the surface mining domain to explore the effect of the changes in open pit mine positioning and size upon observers’ gaze patterns by utilizing eye tracking metrics and attention heatmaps. Statistical tests are also applied and both changes have been shown to significantly modulate the excavated surface’s eye-catching properties, importance and observability.