Sustainable outdoor lighting to improve biodiversity
A collaboration between WE BUILD DENMARK’s living lab DOLL, DTU Electro, and the companies Ocutune, Focus Lighting, and ObiWAN aims to pave the way for more sustainable outdoor lighting that takes biodiversity into account.
The use case “Sustainable Outdoor Lighting to Improve Biodiversity,” will develop and test innovative sensor principles to measure how street lighting affects the circadian rhythms of animals and insects.
What is the challenge?
Artificial light at night, both in cities and rural areas, has been shown to significantly disrupt wildlife. Several studies reveal that melatonin, a dark hormone and sleep signal in diurnal species, is suppressed even at low light levels, ranging from below 0.1 lux for fish and rodents to 1 lux for many birds. For instance, blackbirds can experience a 50% reduction in melatonin levels at night with light levels as low as 0.3 lux.
This sensitivity to outdoor lighting makes it crucial to find adaptable solutions that allow both animals and humans to thrive in our cities and natural areas. For many animals and insects, reduced melatonin levels can impair their ability to find food, reproduce, and navigate.
Which kind of results do the companies expect?
The collaboration between Ocutune and DTU Electro has already led to the development of a prototype sensor, which will be tested at DOLL later in 2024. Since it is an innovative sensor still under development, there have been several activities from early 2024 to the present, focused on defining the sensor’s specifications, including data integration requirements and programming of the sensor’s software. This has involved testing with a mobile lab in five different municipalities during spring 2024, conducted by DTU and Ocutune.
The sensor is expected to be installed on a lighting fixture from Focus Lighting at Poppelstien in Albertslund. Here, the sensor will measure light spectrum and provide insights into the impact of light on biodiversity based on a set of criteria for insects and animals.
What value does it aim to achieve?
In the long term, the sensor is expected to be developed to transmit data to ObiWAN’s communication sensor on the fixture, enabling the adjustment of the light spectrum in the fixture based on several parameters, such as biodiversity in the area, time of day, weather, activity, etc.
This will allow the light to be adapted not only to accommodate human movement but also the movement and existence of animals and insects.
It is important that we design outdoor lighting correctly in terms of control and spectrum, so that animals are not scared away from urban and park areas.
Paul Michael Petersen
Professor, Technical University of Denmark Electro
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