Visual Assessment of Rural Landscapes Based on Qualitative IndicatorsCase Study: Villages of Alamut Region of Qazvin

Aesthetic values and visual aspects of landscapes is one of the most important and influential determinants of the presence and continuity of living in rural areas and can be considered as a basis for the planning and design of such areas. Therefore, identifying the effective indicators and criteria and how to evaluate them in order to reduce cross-sectional interventions in these areas is of high importance. There are two major theoretical approaches in landscape aesthetics that are based on landscape evaluation methods The subjective paradigm with a direct approach that compares people's preferences to reach a consensus as well as the objective paradigm with an indirect approach that evaluates the landscape based on having certain characteristics. The main objective of this study is to identify qualitative indicators that have an impact on the evaluation of rural landscapes to improve their visual quality. In order to achieve this objective, indicators of rural landscapes were extracted from the literature. 10 villages in Alamut region of Qazvin were tested and a total of 50 images from the 10 villages were assigned for initial evaluation. The process of image selection was on the basis of having the most diverse features of the landscape. The selected images were categorized and then the operational and proposed framework of research was developed by using a logical reasoning strategy for the qualitative-visual evaluation of rural landscapes. A questionnaire was prepared to survey selected and categorized images of villages. The target participants were landscape architects (students and graduates of this field) and the questionnaire was sent electronically and at the end, 80 completed questionnaires were reviewed. In the next step, a more detailed questionnaire was prepared to measure the visual beauty of the images based on the components and criteria obtained from the operational framework of the research. A total of 120 questionnaires were analyzed for visual evaluation. T-Test was used to examine the score of each of the components and criteria in the visual beauty of each selected image. Then, in order to assess the relationship between the perceptual aesthetics of the selected images and each of the criteria of the operational framework, multivariate regression analysis was used based on the Stepwise method. In this research, the visually selected images from rural landscapes were evaluated using multi-stage image evaluation techniques with questionnaire and T-Test and regression analysis were used to analyze the results of the questionnaires. Findings of this research provide qualitative criteria and indicators affecting the visual evaluation of rural landscapes as well as introducing the indicators with the highest impact in this research which includes "Visual area", "Earth in Landscape", "Lack of Visual Disruption", "Existence of Spectacular, Unique and Symbolic Elements", and "Distribution of Landscape Characteristics". Following the explanation of rural landscape evaluation indicators, the results show that each of the presented indicators has different degrees of effectiveness in evaluating rural landscape images. Therefore, identifying indicators based on the degree of effectiveness can be a useful guide for rural landscape planners and designers.