When conserving or protecting rare or endangered species, current general guidelines for reducing light pollution might not suffice to ensure long-term threatened species’ survival. Many protected areas are exposed to artificial light at levels with the potential to induce ecological impacts with unknown implications for the ecosystems they are designated to protect. Consequently, it is recommended that precautionary methods for the avoidance and mitigation of light pollution in protected areas be integrated into their management plans. This paper’s aims are to present an overview of best practices in precautionary methods to avoid and mitigate light pollution in protected areas and to identify and discuss what ecosystems should be considered light-sensitive and how to prioritise species and habitats that need protection from artificial light, including examples of legislation covering ecological light pollution in the European Union and in Sweden. The important aspects to include when considering light pollution at a landscape level are listed, and a proposal for prioritisation among species and habitats is suggested. Sensitive and conservation areas and important habitats for particularly vulnerable species could be prioritised for measures to minimise artificial lighting’s negative effects on biodiversity. This may be done by classifying protected natural environments into different zones and applying more constrained principles to limit lighting. The light pollution sensitivity of various environments and ecosystems suggests that different mitigation strategies and adaptations should be used depending on landscape characteristics, species sensitivity and other factors that may determine whether artificial light may be detrimental. Issues of the currently used measurement methods for artificial light at night are reviewed. We also propose and discuss the principles and benefits of using standardized measurement methods and appropriate instrumentation for field measurements of artificial light concerning the environmental impact of light pollution.

Although with the advent of the LEDs the energy consumption in buildings can be reduced by 50%, there exists a potential for energy savings due to lighting controls. Moreover, lighting controls can ensure that the near zero energy requirements by EU can be achieved for near zero energy buildings (nZEBs). For this reason, more sophisticated lighting controls must be proposed in order to take full advantage of LEDs and their flexibility concerning dimming. This paper proposes the architecture of an embedded computer camera controller for monitoring and management of image data, which is applied in various control cases, and particularly in digitally controlled lighting devices. The proposed system deals with real-time monitoring and management of a GigE camera input. An in-house developed algorithm using MATLAB enables the identification of areas in luminance values. The embedded microcontroller is part of a complete lighting control system with an imaging sensor in order to measure and control the illumination of several working areas of a room. The power consumption of the proposed lighting system was measured and was compared with the power consumption of a typical photosensor. The functional performance and operation of the proposed camera control system architecture was evaluated based upon a BeagleBone Black microcontroller board.

The spatial and angular emission patterns of artificial and natural light emitted, scattered, and reflected from the Earth at night are far more complex than those for scattered and reflected solar radiation during daytime. In this commentary, we use examples to show that there is additional information contained in the angular distribution of emitted light. We argue that this information could be used to improve existing remote sensing retrievals based on night lights, and in some cases could make entirely new remote sensing analyses possible. This work will be challenging, so we hope this article will encourage researchers and funding agencies to pursue further study of how multi‐angle views can be analyzed or acquired.

This paper proposes a new system for controlling the artificial lighting using a smart imaging sensor that adds more flexibility by considering multiple control areas and performing individual signaling for each luminaire. The paper describes the development process of the system, the core technology and presents some preliminary results obtained by using the system in real conditions. The system is suitable for the control of small offices and corridors as well as large open plan offices by using a panomorph lens. An optimization algorithm then determines the dimming level of each individual luminaire in the room in order to achieve the desired illumination levels and uniformities on each control area.