Modelling ultraviolet exposures in a school environment

Abstract

A technique has been developed to represent erythemally effective ultraviolet radiation exposure within a school environment. The technique models the erythemally effective exposure onto a horizontal plane representation of a mapped school environment located in Hervey Bay (25 o S, 153 o E), Australia. The input parameters used to model the ultraviolet exposures received within the school playground included the measured sky view, ground albedo and standing surface albedo. Estimates of the erythemally effective ultraviolet exposure received within the school playground during morning tea and lunch time meal breaks during a winter and summer school day are presented. The influence of tree shade and building structure was found to vary significantly with solar zenith angle modelled over the winter and summer school meal break times with horizontal plane exposures predicted to vary from between 0 and 7 SED at different locations within the playground. The technique presented provides a method that can be followed to examine the effect of surrounding buildings and surface structures of real environments on the predicted horizontal plane ultraviolet exposure. This is the authors' accepted manuscript of Downs, Nathan and Parisi, Alfio and Turner, Joanna and Turnbull, David (2008) Modelling ultraviolet exposures in a school environment. Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences, 7 (6). pp. 700-710.

Mean Exposure Fractions of Human Body Solar UV Exposure Patterns for Application in Different Ambient Climates

“…(17,18), Schippnick and Green (19) and Rundel (20). This model has been used previously and is discussed in detail in previous research (21). The weighted MEF influences the exposure received by the total exposed skin surfaces of the body for the changing position of the sun for each day.…”

“…The UV irradiance model used to calculate the results presented in Table 3 is a hybrid model employing the numerical algorithms of Green et al (17,18), Schippnick and Green (19) and Rundel (20). This model has been used previously and is discussed in detail in previous research (21). The weighted MEF influences the exposure received by the total exposed skin surfaces of the body for the changing position of the sun for each day.…”

From ultraviolet to Prussian blue: a spectral response for the cyanotype process and a safe educational activity to explain UV exposure for all ages

“…Two methods of pixel counting were used to determine effect of exposure per wavelength. An algorithm developed to count blue pixels in a sky image used in Downs, et al [31] was used to count the number of dark blue pixels as stipulated by a saturation amount. The second method was the use of the program Multispec (for Windows) which is used for analysis of multispectral image data.…”

Dialectic Form Finding of Passive and Adaptive Shading Enclosures

“…In this respect, the role of the building enclosure becomes important as it is at the interface between the indoor and outdoor environment. Moreover, enclosures in purely outdoor environments are crucial for human health: built shading has been extensively outlined from a medical perspective [13][14][15][16] as an effective prevention strategy to mitigate health hazards. However, commercial outdoor shading enclosures are mostly driven by uniformity ("one design fits all") and often fail to cast shade over the desired target-shade area.…”