News

EMPIR project Pavement surface characterisation for smart and efficient road lighting (16NRM02) was set up with the aim of providing measurements and guidance to outdated CEN (European Committee for Standards) and CIE (International Commission on Illumination) written standards. Road lighting must provide sufficient light for road safety, but international CEN and CIE standards are currently based on 40 year old measurements of road surface reflectance characteristics.

The work of the project will identify new geometries for measuring light reflectance on roads, develop guidelines for evaluating road conditions such as ageing and wetness, and establish traceable measured data from current road materials needed to update reference tables. It will also produce guidelines and reference materials for calibrating portable commercial devices for on-site luminance measurements.

A workshop organised by the project consortium and held at a major CIE meeting provided a forum for measurement results to date from the project to be presented and discussed. This is an early step in the long process of revising written standards. Stakeholders from 27 organisations attended the workshop. These included universities, research centres, highways agencies and industrial companies in the field of lighting and measuring instruments.

The project still has two years to run, and the updated standards will allow lighting designers to improve performance, cut energy consumption, and create safer night-time driving.

Related projects:

• Metrology for solid state lighting (ENG05) studied lighting for road tunnels and entrance and exit zones, enabling safety critical design parameters to be determined 
• Metrology for efficient and safe innovative lighting (ENG62) looked at measurements for solid state lighting

This EMPIR project is co-funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and the EMPIR Participating States.