Optimization of lighting installations should be a priority in order to reduce energy consumption and obtrusive light while providing optimal visibility conditions for road users. For the design of lighting installations, it is assumed that the road has homogeneous photometric characteristics and only one viewing angle is used. There are often significant differences between the design of lighting installations and their actual performance. In order to examine whether these differences are due to the photometry of the road, this study proposes metrics to assess the influence of road heterogeneity and observation angle. These metrics have been used on many measurements conducted on site and in the laboratory for different pavements. A calculation engine has been developed to realize road lighting design with several r-tables in the same calculation or for different observation angles. Thus, this study shows that a root mean squared deviation (RMSD) calculation, including average luminance and uniformities associated with different r-tables, is directly correlated to a normalized root mean squared deviation (NRMSD) calculation between these r-tables. With these proposed metrics it is possible to optimize lighting installation while taking into account different types of urban surfaces and the diversity of users.

Street lighting ensures visibility and legibility for road users. In this paper, performances of the lighting installation of four road sections with different type of road surface are simulated in accordance with guidelines and road lighting standards. Then, the calculation of the visibility level of a target according to the Adrian’s model is included. Next, the light reflections on the road surface are added to the calculation of the target luminance. For this, the area considered in front of the target as well as the number of elementary surfaces are fixed and a Q_0-scaling of the r-table obtained for α=45° is performed. We compare the results obtained for each section with and without considering the light reflections and conclude that there is negligible incidence of the nature of the road surface on the target luminance. However, an effect of the road surface on the visibility level of the target is observed.

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