Dajana BJELAJAC, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Bojan DJERCAN, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia
Similar to the living beings, each city has its rhythm which is dictated by the amount of sunlight in the atmosphere and many scientists throughout history have mostly studied daytime, while nights were usually neglected. This overlooked time, but also space, became interesting for the scientists only in the last few decades, since modern lighting has enabled numerous economic and social activities to continue deep into the late hours, while at the same time degrading the quality of the nighttime environment. Problems of poorly directed, excessive, or overly bright lighting are most often associated with cities compared to rural areas, where the population density imposes the need for brighter public lighting. In addition, urban nights are also known for a significant amount of decorative and advertising lighting, which is often overly intrusive and can be a factor of risk in dense traffic conditions.
In the case of the city of Novi Sad, the large influx of population from rural areas and smaller nearby cities in recent years encourages the hyper-construction of high buildings with residential and commercial spaces, which automatically brings to the higher demand for public lighting, as well as density of advertisements. The subject of this research is the problem of light pollution in the urban environment of the city of Novi Sad, as a hitherto unexplored polluter of the environment. The analysis was performed through the quantification and presentation of the spatial distribution of light pollution, as well as through the examination of the information and attitudes of the population towards artificial lighting. The visual presentation of the spatial distribution of light pollution highlights the most problematic parts of the city (in terms of excessive or insufficient amount of light), while the preliminary results of the survey provide an insight into the citizen's level of knowledge about light pollution and attitudes towards artificial lighting.
Mots clés : light pollution|urbanization|gis|public awareness|ALAN
A105401DB