Candidacy exam at LIPID

Beatrice's thesis will focus on discomfort glare from daylight and electric light in the office.

In many office settings, there is a co-existence between daylight and electrical light sources when it comes to overall illumination. Yet, while discomfort glare has been investigated for many years, visual discomfort prediction metrics have typically been proposed so as to apply either to daylight or to electric lighting, but not to both. This is probably resulting from the fact that perceptual dynamics taking place in the presence of different glare sources in a single visual scene – let alone of different types – have not been explored much. There is therefore a need to investigate further what the influence of the interplay between multiple sources might be on an occupant's perception of glare, especially given the many instances where there will be more than one source of glare or one type of light source in someone’s field of view. Towards this end, this PhD topic will address the question first by looking at glare perception from multiple light sources – starting from what defines a light source to be glary at all – , and then at glare perception from daylight vs. electric light in office-like experimental settings.