Editorial: Connectivity and complexity

In the past, when explaining to strangers what I studied, the question that I could see forming in their minds was – why would anyone study lighting? Lighting is simple, you turn the switch on and there’s light. You turn the switch off and it’s dark. Of course, those were simpler times, when the dominant light source was incandescent, the wall switch was the main control, dimmers were very rare and lighting designers even rarer. Today, things are a lot more complex. We have a rapidly expanding market for solid state lighting, we are aware that exposure to light has effects beyond vision and we have lighting designers to show us what beauty can be created through a combination of artistic vision and technical ingenuity. But things are about to become even more complex.

The cause of this increasing complexity is connectivity. This refers to the ability to use wireless technology to link luminaires to external controls and sensors and thereby to vary the light output, spectrum and distribution of the installation as desired. So far, this ability has most commonly been used to monitor the operation of road lighting so that light output can be adjusted according to weather conditions and traffic density and hours of use and lamp failures recorded. But that is only the beginning. There are proposals for the use of sensors that detect the presence of pedestrians so that the lighting can follow their progress. Another possibility is for control systems that optimize the light output from an array of luminaires to match illuminance preferences declared by the occupants, at minimum energy consumption. Also appearing on the market are luminaires that allow the owner to adjust the light output and light spectrum over a wide range, as they wish. There is no doubt that connectivity is going to grow and change the nature of lighting from a fixed building service into something much more flexible and controllable. Two questions that need to be addressed are who is going to have that control, the owner of the installation or the users of it, and how can lighting quality be preserved in the face of wide differences in individual preference?