Spatial Analytics for Enhancing Street Light Coverage of Public Spaces

The spatial distribution of public area lighting in an urban region greatly influences human activities and safety. Such services are not free, often consuming significant budgetary resources to site, maintain, and operate on an annual basis. Further, lighting has been found to negatively impact the environment by limiting visibility in the form of glare, trespass, and sunglow as well disturbing diurnal rhythms, breeding behavior, and migration patterns of fauna, not to mention impacts and costs attributable to energy generation. Enhancing configurations of nighttime lighting sources is therefore important on many fronts to address fiscal limitations and sustainability concerns. There are many implications for system inefficiency that arise due to growth and development, necessitating systematic evaluation approaches. Light provision can be assessed using spatial optimization. Both benefits and impacts can be taken into account, enabling a range of analytical methods to be brought to bear on decision making and policy associated with public lighting. This article develops a methodology for studying lighting in an urban area based on the use of geographic information systems, spatial statistics and spatial optimization. Relationships between observed patterns of nighttime light are deduced relative to energy costs. Models are developed and applied to identify service tradeoffs to support planning efforts. Application results highlight the utility and insight possible through the use of an integrated spatial analytical framework.