Abstract: visibility evaluation, as one of the important components of GIS visibility, is applied to forest fire,constructional layout,landscape study etc. In the paper, 14 typical forest fire lookout towers were researched by virtue of the visibility analysis. The results showed: (1) visibility analysis was limited by the tower height,visible distance and terrain. Its precision depends on the accuracy of spatial and attributes data and was related with interpolated methods; (2) According to the visible distance of lookout towers (10Km), visible area was 12.1% in the whole city. If the visible distance of lookout towers was perfect, visible area was 68.32% in the city. (3) Visibility analysis provided references of the lookout tower layout and could realized the advanced visibility.

Key words: forest fire, lookout tower, visibility, Yichang