Light for Life® Virtual Symposium: Outdoor Spaces

Outdoor space is valuable, highly valuable. For many municipalities, the development and/or protection of outdoor space has become a competitive advantage towards tourism and population growth. This includes the hours after dark when visual safety and ecological protection are at a premium. Recent updates to BSR/IES RP-43 will position you to understand how to handle the changing landscape.

Lighting design standards reflect the needs of humans as we move through our world. Despite growing interest in outdoor lighting standards for ecological concerns, there remain many misconceptions in the lighting community about applying lighting design to ecological contexts and non-human needs. This session will provide a brief overview of current scientific knowledge on non-human perception and the limitations of applying human-centric lighting design to ecological scenarios. By focusing on what science does know about ecological lighting concerns, lighting designers can avoid unverified assumptions and human bias and make more informed ecological lighting decisions.

Everyone wants less light pollution and good visual comfort at night…let’s talk technology and the importance of the designer’s discretion.

Modern astronomy is now mostly done from remote mountaintops, and is seriously compromised by man-made lighting. The observatories in Hawaii will be used as examples of sites that have been preserved with dark skies, and some of the research being done will be explained in the context of the need for the dark sky to be preserved.

It has been common practice to base “Good, Better, Best” descriptors to lighting products for energy efficiency, particularly when discussing energy incentive and rebate programs. Many decisions are made solely based on “How much of a rebate (dollars) will I receive if I use this bucket of products?” The issue with this approach is that the application of the light being generated is typically not considered for these choices. Furthermore, luminaires with the highest efficacy values often don’t meet the quality criteria for the applications for which they are chosen.
This session will include a demonstration providing a visual representation of this challenge.

This session uses completed projects from the FMS studios to illustrate the evolution of the practice of lighting design over the past 25 years as our design strategies have responded to increased understanding of the effects of electric lighting at night on flora, fauna, and dark skies, and the arrival and dominance of the LED in architectural lighting.

An overview of efforts to update and revise IES Lighting Zone definitions

Illuminated sign technology and the way we evaluate signs are evolving. Methods for measuring and assessing illuminated signs must also adapt to provide accurate results.

Street lighting design has long relied on a few general “typical layouts”, often overlooking the unique spatial conditions that exist across streetscapes. This session introduces how traditional GIS and spatial analysis methods, commonly used in infrastructure planning, can improve lighting outcomes. By mapping illumination levels and overlaying land use, transportation assets, environmental constraints, and crime and crash data, cities can better align lighting with actual needs. Street lighting is multifaceted. We light for transportation safety, crime prevention, and economic development, while also addressing energy use, protected habitat and species, migratory birds, and dark skies. This session will highlight how spatial analysis can help lighting designers make more context-sensitive decisions on street lighting projects.