RACC Virtual Presentation Recording – “Dark Skies and Community Friendly Lighting”

“Dark Skies and Community Friendly Lighting” presented by Bob Parks
Nov 10, 2021

Bob Parks is the executive director of the Smart Outdoor Lighting Alliance (SOLA). He is a member of the Illuminating Engineering Society (MIES), Lighting Certified (LC), Community Friendly Lighting Certified (CFLC), and an ecological lighting designer. The focus of the Smart Outdoor Lighting Alliance (SOLA) is to help cities make the transition to LED public lighting using the Community Friendly Lighting (CFL) principles of improved visual comfort and visibility, while reducing glare, light trespass and sky glow. He is the chairman of the IES Outdoor Environmental Lighting committee (OELC) and former executive director of the International Dark-Sky Association. While at IDA he served as lighting designer for a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service which resulted in new ecologically responsible lighting being installed in nine national parks and later with the Florida Fish and Wildlife survey, design and retrofit of 100 miles of the Gulf Coast to install turtle safe lighting on public land. As chairman of the OELC he has worked to develop a new recommended practice (RP) to regulate outdoor sign and billboard lighting and is starting work on a new RP for Parks and Protected Areas. Bob has presented at many lighting conferences in the US, Europe, South America, and Australia and partners with LED Magazine to present webinars on Community Friendly Lighting. Parks recently consulted pro bono with the Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) to plan and execute a public demonstration and evaluation of proposed LED roadway fixtures for the upcoming conversion of all Virginia highway lighting (75,000 to 150,000 fixtures to be installed over the next 10 years). The test presented various lighting fixtures for comparison for glare, visibility and visual comfort.