On the Applicability of the Space Syntax Methodology for the Determination of Street Lighting Classes

Abstract

Street lighting plays a crucial role in a city’s night landscape and in urban traffic management, influencing users’ comfort and safety. To contain costs of public street lighting systems and to avoid energy waste, illuminance levels on road surfaces must be adequate to fit actual traffic volumes, as prescribed by regulations. This is true not only for motorized roads but also for sidewalks, paths, and pedestrian areas. Regulations in force establish a relationship between road traffic volumes and minimum illuminance levels through the lighting classes selection procedure. Lighting classes selection is based on various para meters among which traffic volume is the most difficult to evaluate because traffic volumes are generally estimated or measured by a traffic observation campaign. In this paper, an alternative method for classes association which is based on a space syntax approach, is described. The method was applied to the case study town of Pontedera (Italy) for the analysis of the pedestrian and motorized traffic and it shows a good correlation between measured and estimated traffic volumes, demonstrating how the methodology, with a precise and quick estimation of traffic volumes, can help lead to a suitable design of the lighting infrastructure, aiming to reduce energy waste and to avoid oversized lighting systems.

Urban Connectivity: Elements for an Identification of Bir El Bey’s Preferential Landscapes

“…The 'Gate method' allows to measure and observe movement data in the city and more specifically pedestrian or vehicle movements [38,39,50,51]. Therefore, the 'Gate method', oriented to the extraction of 'movement traces', evaluates the axes traveled by the movements of the pedestrians [52]. This method allowed us to follow and trace all the users' itineraries with the number of people crossing the considered space as structurally observed by Space Syntax approaches [53].…”

Influence of the Global Urban Grid on Natural Movement within a Local Public Space

“…This was done to validate the predicted values based on the real-world scenario. The movement ratio was calculated by counting the number of vehicles and pedestrians moving through the grid at a given time, which is known as the gate count (Leccese, Lista et al, 2020).…”

Virtual Reality for Smart Urban Lighting Design: Review, Applications and Opportunities

“…Mainly, lighting system performances are evaluated through the average luminance, the average illuminance values, and the luminance and illuminance uniformity. Some methodologies for the correct determination of the street lighting classes are available in the literature [41], since it affects both visual performance and energy consumption connected to lighting systems.…”