PUBLIC LIGHTING SIMULATION IN VIRTUAL REALITY
Street lighting is a crucial element for the nightlife of cities: it encourages recreational and economic activities, and increases social and community interaction. Several studies have also shown that street lighting has a significant impact on reducing traffic accidents and, to some extent, crime rates.
Today, the management of urban lighting is designed to be more respectful of the environment and in line with the objectives of more sober energy consumption. Light pollution has a negative impact on local biodiversity. It can also disrupt the sleep and circadian rhythms of people living nearby. However, the literature lacks evidence showing the impact of lighting conditions on human well-being.
Virtual reality offers versatility allowing to modify and analyze some environmental parameters such as light intensity, color, etc. By modifying these values, we can completely change the simulation without any cost other than that of computer tools.
Besides, this technology allows continuous work: all relevant factors can be added inside the simulation to continue expanding the range of research on the perception of safety in the streets.
Our work is carried out on virtual models with several types of environment, in order to test and evaluate the impact of a reduction in urban lighting. All this work is being carried out within the Noz Breizh Chair as part of tutored projects and vacations supervised by the Lab-STICC and ENIB.
Finding a link between the perception of safety and the intensity of light is a difficult task. Through this research project, we will try to reach a conclusion based on the results of virtual simulations with participants who are very real.
We are proposing exploratory approaches to the use of virtual reality to study various issues related to lighting conditions:
- the impact of lighting intensity on pedestrians' sense of safety, a work which led to a multidisciplinary publication in 2023;
- the impact of realistic lighting simulation in virtual reality on participants' perceptions;
- the impact of artificial light at night on the vision of nocturnal species, a work carried out in 2024-2025.
A research project carried out by
Our meetings
On January 23, 2024, members of the Chair were delighted to welcome an audience willing to explore a "Virtual diving into the perception of lighting and urban space".
We could attend 3 presentations of promising thesis work (Michèle Atie, AAU, ENSA Nantes; Benjamin Beaucamp, AAU, Centrale Nantes; Maxim Spur, Lab-STICC, ENIB) followed by a demonstration of several experiments on virtual reality simulations.
Thanks to the organizers and the audience!
Several demonstrations of our works on virtual reality applied to the study of the relationship between the feeling of safety and street lighting have been carried out as part of events organized by the Noz Breizh Chair and its partners, notably at:
- Cop Locale 2022 conference
- Fêtes de la science 2022 and 2023
- Smart Noz scientific and artistic seminars in Kerangoff and Keredern
- Youth in Action in Keredern 2023
- 19th European Researchers' Night 2023
Our publications regarding VR simulation
Posters
Citation : Chaire Noz Breizh (2024), Simulation VR, plongées virtuelles dans la perception de l'éclairage et de l'espace urbain, présenté lors du colloque Smart Noz, Brest, 18-20 mars 2024
Citation : Chaire Noz Breizh (2024), Simulation VR et éclairage public, phase 1 : perception de la sécurité (2022-2023), présenté lors du colloque Smart Noz, Brest, 18-20 mars 2024
Citation : Chaire Noz Breizh (2024), Simulation VR et éclairage public, phase 2 : perception du réalisme (2023-2024), présenté lors du colloque Smart Noz, Brest, 18-20 mars 2024
Scientific publications
Olivier Augereau, Simon Bruno, Ignacio Pérez Allub, Edna Hernández González, Nathalie Le Bigot, et al.. Impact of Public Lighting Intensity on the Feeling of Safety in Virtual Reality. 2022 ACM, International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Sep 2022, Cambridge, United-Kingdom. 10.1145/3544793.3563409. hal-04005943v2