Lighting Research Group

Shahab Gorjimahlabani has been awarded his PhD for a thesis on lighting and pedestrian reassurance. In this work he conducted two field studies using the day-dark method. The first was a pilot study to explore the time of day at which the daylight evaluations are recorded – around midday, when daylight is brightest, or in the evening at the same time of day as the after-dark evaluations (taking advantage of the bi-annual clock change to do this). The second was a more extensive project, using a larger sample of test participants to compare group vs solo evaluations, and used these data to estimate the optimal illuminance for pedestrian reassurance. He also carried

Maan Balela has submitted his thesis and is awaiting the viva. Maan studied the impact of darkness on cycling using travel count data. He investigated the choice of case and control hours, and potential macro scale (between-cities) and micro scale (within-cities) sources of variance in the deterrent effect of darkness on cycling.

The five PhD students starting in September 2024 are now finishing their first research exercise and have submitted their confirmation reports. Yohanes Raniasta is extending Shahab’s study of pedestrian reassurance by testing factors other than lighting. Livanur Sen conducted a systematic review of route choice: we want to know the degree to which road lighting influence route choice and searching for a robust method for measuring this. Yutong Chen conducted an experiment to measure discomfort from glare at the low light levels typical of pedestrian routes after dark. Her test procedure included the proposed two-step evaluation alongside the widely used de Boer scale, and the evaluations were given whilst walking on a treadmill and standing still – the former better representing the real situation and the latter being the common approach in previous work. Heyuan Sun and Billy Iqbal are working on lighting for cyclists. Heyuan is analysing road traffic crash records to study the factors around cyclist crashes with HGVs. Billy is studying cycle-mounted lighting – can we improve cyclists’ conspicuity to drivers?

The research group attended the CIE 2025 mid-term session in Vienna – thanks very much to CIE-UK for the support to cover travel and accommodation costs. Between them, during the conference days Steve and Jim gave four oral presentations and contributed to the workshop for revising CIE115: during the technical sessions we updated progress on our committees on cycling, discomfort from glare, and the CIE115 update.

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