Quantifying Lighting’s Benefits

Peter Boyce, former head of human factors at the Lighting Research Center, recently contributed a very interesting article to LD+A. In his article, Boyce objects to vague claims the lighting industry makes concerning lighting’s impact on productivity and health. These claims, he says, tend to vanish when faced with demands for hard supporting evidence. He also describes the challenges of quantifying these benefits.

Finally, he cites five things the lighting industry needs to more clearly demonstrate lighting’s benefits:

1. Stop making vague claims about the effects of lighting on productivity, safety and health unless supported by clear epidemiological evidence and a plausible mechanism involving lighting.
2. Accept that for many activities, lighting conditions are just one factor amongst many that influence the outcome.
3. Recognize that the main role of lighting is to change visual function and that optimizing visual functions should be the basis of lighting recommendations.
4. Identify what visual functions are relevant to achieving the desired benefits for a range of common activities.
5. Measure the effect of the amount, spectrum and distribution of light on these visual functions.
6. Develop lighting recommendations for a range of common activities based on optimizing the relevant visual functions.
7. Support the collection of field data to test the benefits of different forms of lighting as predicted by the performance of the relevant visual functions.

Click here to read the article.

Craig DiLouie

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