ACHIEVING CONSISTENCY IN LIGHTING SCHEMES FOR CONSTRUCTION WORK ZONES THROUGH LIGHTING SIMULATION

Nighttime construction is being adopted by many state DOT's as a way to mitigate the impact of construction operations on the traveling public. Although a number of states have developed standard specifications for nighttime lighting, these standards are usually in the form of generic requirement statements that only specify minimum illuminance levels. The lighting standards do not include specific ways to achieve this illuminance level such as lighting arrangements and configurations for various work zone plans and construction operations. This leaves confusion between the traffic engineers and the contractors and does not guarantee consistency in those plans, thus affecting productivity and safety (lighting conditions account for 18% to 28% of work zone accidents). The main objective of this study is to utilize three dimensional animation and lighting analysis software to study and model lighting conditions of a construction site. This is expected to increase the safety and productivity of construction operations by achieving consistency in work zone lighting schemes. A computerized model was developed, called Nitelite. Various lighting schemes can be studied using the software to provide for typical applications including lighting fixture's locations, luminance, mounting height, tilt angle, and fixture type. The results from the developed software tool were validated through comparisons with previous research conducted using field measurements.