Public space lighting (PSL) contributes to pedestrians' feeling of safety (FoS) in urban areas after natural dark. However, little is known how different PSL attributes, such as illuminance, light ...temperature, uniformity and glare, affect people's FoS in different contextual settings. The present study aims to bridge this knowledge gap by developing a model linking different PSL attributes with FoS, while controlling for individual, locational, environmental and temporal factors. To develop such model, the study employs a novel interactive user-oriented method, based on a specially-designed mobile phone application-CityLightsTM. Using this app, a representative sample of observers reported their impressions of PSL attributes and FoS in three cities in Israel, following a set of predetermined routes and points. As the study shows, higher levels of illumination and uniformity positively affect FoS, while lights perceived as warm tend to generate higher FoS than lights perceived as cold. These findings may guide future illumination polices aimed at promoting energy efficiency while ensuring urban sustainability.
•The effectiveness of enforcement policies against C&D waste offenders is tested.•Multivariate regression analysis is performed to estimate policy effectiveness.•Vehicle impoundment policy is found ...to be effective in deterring potential offenders.•Low effectiveness of other policies may be due to lack of immediacy.•The proposed approach can help engineering more effective enforcement policies.
Illegal dumping of construction and demolition (C&D) waste is a major concern for environmental policy-makers. Three different environmental law enforcement policies, aimed at the reduction of illegal C&D waste dumping, are enforced in Israel. These policies include fines (F), vehicle impoundment (V), and criminal indictment (I) by the court. Although, the scope of illegal C&D waste dumping in Israel appears to decline, little is known which of the above policies has been effective in combating the phenomenon. In an attempt to answer this question, we use data on F-V-I instances, recorded between July 2007 and December 2016, and compare them with monthly changes in the ratio between the amount of waste brought to authorized waste dumping sites and the estimated amount of C&D waste generated in the country each month. As the study shows, only the V-sanction was found to be significantly affecting the ratio (t = 3.083; p < 0.01), while the effect of other policy was found insignificant. We explain low efficiency of other law enforcement policies by relatively small fines imposed on the offenders, long court proceedings, combined with a relatively low chance of being caught. By contrast, the V-sanction may be more effective because it results in immediate and severe economic losses to the offenders, causing C&D waste transporters to haul their load to authorized sites. As we argue, for an environmental enforcement policy to be effective, it should be adequate to the severity of the offense and applied swiftly.
•Areas under potentially elevated risk of illegal C&D waste dumping were assessed.•The analysis was performed using multivariate statistical analysis and GIS tools.•Roads, forests and ravines were ...found to be associated with illegal waste sites.•Map of areas under an elevated risk of potential C&D waste dumping was generated.•The proposed methodology can help law enforcement authorities be more effective.
Construction and demolition (C&D) waste, dumped illegally in ravines and open areas, contaminates soil and can cause underground water pollution and forests fires. Yet, effective monitoring of illegal C&D waste dumping and enforcing legislation against the offenders are often a difficult task due to the large size of geographic areas that need to be monitored, and limited human and financial resources available to environmental law enforcement agencies. In this study, we use Geographic Information System (GIS) tools and geo-statistical modelling to identify the areas under potentially elevated risk of illegal C&D waste dumping in the Haifa district of Israel. As our analysis shows, locational factors, significantly associated with the accumulated amount of waste in the existing illegal C&D waste sites, include: distance to the nearest main road, depth of the ravine present at the site (p<0.01), and forest proximity (p<0.05). Using the model incorporating these locational parameters, we mapped the areas under the elevated risk of illegal C&D waste dumping for future monitoring. As we suggest, the proposed approach may be useful for environmental law enforcement authorities, by helping them to focus on specific sites for inspection, save resources, and act against the offenders more efficiently.
Artificial lights raise night sky luminance, creating the most visible effect of light pollution-artificial skyglow. Despite the increasing interest among scientists in fields such as ecology, ...astronomy, health care, and land-use planning, light pollution lacks a current quantification of its magnitude on a global scale. To overcome this, we present the world atlas of artificial sky luminance, computed with our light pollution propagation software using new high-resolution satellite data and new precision sky brightness measurements. This atlas shows that more than 80% of the world and more than 99% of the U.S. and European populations live under light-polluted skies. The Milky Way is hidden from more than one-third of humanity, including 60% of Europeans and nearly 80% of North Americans. Moreover, 23% of the world's land surfaces between 75°N and 60°S, 88% of Europe, and almost half of the United States experience light-polluted nights.
A 2-year study was carried out in a sample of 120 apartments in two cities in Israel, Jerusalem and Nesher, in which different strategies to influence energy consumption were tested using an ...interventional case-control design. Socio-demographic attributes of individual households were recorded and building thermal performance was evaluated by detailed computer simulation. Attitudes of the study participants to environmental issues were assessed to identify potential motivations for energy savings. Although year-on-year energy consumption increased for exogenous reasons in all test groups, in Jerusalem the increase in the maximum intervention group (which received detailed information on energy consumption patterns over time, and individually tailored energy-saving tips) was 2.5%, compared to 9.5% in the reference group, which received only generic energy saving tips. The difference among groups in Nesher was not significant. A multivariate analysis confirmed that the attempt to influence apartment occupants’ behaviour failed to generate a statistically significant reduction in domestic energy consumption. The study underlines the importance of controlling for endogenous factors, such as weather and building thermal performance, while evaluating the effectiveness of different intervention strategies, to avoid potentially wrong inferences about the effectiveness of such strategies. We conclude that effective behaviour modification may require repeated implementation of a broad range of tools over a sustained period of time.
Context
Artificial light at night (ALAN) provides an array of important benefits but might also adversely affect humans and other living organisms. Yet, the existing reviews of accumulated knowledge ...about the multifaceted effects associated with exposure to ALAN focus on distinct ecosystem components. As a result, our understanding of potential system-wide impacts of ALAN exposure is insufficient.
Objectives
This paper attempts to bridge this knowledge gap by reviewing a wide range of studies, with a particular focus on identifying the impacts of ALAN exposure that are
common
to different species.
Methods
The survey is conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and covers peer-reviewed articles published from 2000 to 2019.
Results
Seventy-four eligible articles, out of 1223 initially identified, were selected and synthesized. 20% of them focus on humans, while the rest explore other living organisms, such as vertebrates, avian species, arthropods, aquatic organisms, and vegetation. The review demonstrates that similar adverse effects of ALAN exposure, ranging from sleep disturbance, depression, weight gain, eating and movement disorders, to elevated risk of cancer, are manifested across different components of the ecosystem, and therefore entail wider and more complex risks to its stability and integrity.
Conclusion
To reduce ecosystem risks, associated with constantly increasing ALAN levels, illumination policies should be based on directional and reduced nighttime lighting, which can help to avoid unnecessary exposures. The study highlights knowledge gaps that warrant further research attention.
Green buildings (GBs) bring multiple benefits to homebuyers. However, the lack of knowledge or uncertainty about these benefits, combined with a nominal price premium (PP) for GBs, may prevent ...prospective homebuyers from entering the GB market. Therefore, governmental incentives may be needed. The present study serves the dual purpose of examining the PP size that prospective homebuyers in Israel are willing to pay (WTP) for GBs, and investigating, for the first time, the potential impact of prevalent GB policy instruments on the premium's size. Findings from a nationwide online survey indicate an acceptable PP in the range of 7–10%. Expected maintenance savings and familiarity with GB concept and benefits are found to be positively associated with the size of the premium, while counterintuitively, financial incentives, such as tax breaks and subsidized loans, are found to result in lesser, rather than greater, WTP PP. This indicates that financial incentives to homebuyers may be counterproductive by generating emotive and opposite responses, and that a long-term governmental commitment to support GB maintenance may be more effective. The study suggests a mix of financial and non-financial GB incentives to homebuyers. The study mainly contributes to better-understanding of how potential homebuyers' GB choice can be encouraged by applying informed policy tools. It also emphasizes the importance of evaluating unexpected consequences of future interventions in the GB market.
•The study examines the acceptable size of green buildings (GB) price premium.•The price premium size was co-analyzed with the main GB incentives to homebuyers.•Direct financial incentives were associated with lower acceptable price premium.•Maintenance assistance was found to increase the acceptable size of price premium.•A mix of financial and non-financial incentives is suggested to stimulate GB choice.
The transition towards greater smartness is an emerging trend in the development of modern cities. This transition manifests itself in the widespread adoption of information and communication ...technologies (ICTs), cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and other technological tools aimed at improving the level of city smartness. Although numerous studies have focused on the smart city (SC) phenomenon, knowledge about empirical criteria that can be used to define a city as “smart” and to measure the degree of a city’s “smartness” remains limited. The present study aims to bridge this knowledge gap by a systematic literature review of recent studies, in which various empirical criteria are used for SC identification. The study helps to identify a total of 48 SC identification metrics, which are further split into three main categories—smart digital technology, living conditions, and environmental (ecological) sustainability. Among these groups of criteria, the “smart digital technology” group of metrics appears to be the most popular, while criteria pertinent to “ecological sustainability” are applied considerably less often. As the study also reveals, only about half of the criteria used by empirical studies for SC identification actually relate to urban residents’ needs, with the rest being general technological measures. Therefore, for a balanced SC assessment, we suggest a ranking system based on the nine most important metrics, which equally represent all the main aspects of the SC phenomenon while placing an emphasis on the improvement of the quality of life of local residents. The proposed system is applied to several major cities across the globe to demonstrate its use and usefulness.
Remote sensing of night light emissions in the visible band offers a unique opportunity to directly observe human activity from space. This has allowed a host of applications including mapping urban ...areas, estimating population and GDP, monitoring disasters and conflicts. More recently, remotely sensed night lights data have found use in understanding the environmental impacts of light emissions (light pollution), including their impacts on human health. In this review, we outline the historical development of night-time optical sensors up to the current state of the art sensors, highlight various applications of night light data, discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights with a focus on the limitations of current sensors, and provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights. While the paper mainly focuses on space borne remote sensing, ground based sensing of night-time brightness for studies on astronomical and ecological light pollution, as well as for calibration and validation of space borne data, are also discussed. Although the development of night light sensors lags behind day-time sensors, we demonstrate that the field is in a stage of rapid development. The worldwide transition to LED lights poses a particular challenge for remote sensing of night lights, and strongly highlights the need for a new generation of space borne night lights instruments. This work shows that future sensors are needed to monitor temporal changes during the night (for example from a geostationary platform or constellation of satellites), and to better understand the angular patterns of light emission (roughly analogous to the BRDF in daylight sensing). Perhaps most importantly, we make the case that higher spatial resolution and multispectral sensors covering the range from blue to NIR are needed to more effectively identify lighting technologies, map urban functions, and monitor energy use.
•Remote sensing of night lights allows observation of human activity from space.•We provide a historical overview of the development of such night-time sensors.•We highlight various applications of remote sensing of night lights.•We discuss the special challenges associated with remote sensing of night lights.•We provide an outlook for the future of remote sensing of night lights.
Sleep is a reversible state that sustains physiological and psychological processes in humans. As well established, individual-level factors, such as stress, smoking, drugs, and caffeine intake, ...reduce sleep duration and quality. However, studies of the effect of environmental risk factors, such as artificial light at night (ALAN) and noise, on sleep have been infrequent. Using records obtained from the 2017 Social Survey of Israel and combined with ALAN satellite data and various proxies for traffic noise, the present study aimed to determine how the combination of ALAN and traffic noise impact sleep duration and quality in urban areas. The increase of road density at the place of residence reduces average sleep duration by ~4.5% (~18 min.) and increases the frequency of reported sleep difficulties by ~3.5%, all other factors held equal. Similarly, an increase in ALAN exposure reduces average sleep duration by ~3% (~12 min) and increases the frequency of reported sleep difficulties by ~11%. The study also reveals a significant interaction between the two environmental risk factors in question, with the adverse impact of ALAN on sleep quality especially pronounced in high noise exposure areas.
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