Light to the Rescue with CLUE

February 20, 2020

Can light make a difference in a crisis?

Ever thought how lighting could help in a crisis or emergency?  Or how it could save someone’s life? This year we received more than 300 brilliant and creative entries showing how light can make a difference in a crisis.
 

Community Lighting for the Urban Environment (CLUE) is an annual competition aimed at young and emerging lighting designers, challenging them to design meaningful projects for communities around the world.
 

Supported by the Signify Lighting Academy, CLUE invites the aspiring designers to consider pressing societal issues and envision innovative design projects. This year’s competition theme was ‘Exploring the role of light in emergencies’.
 

The task was to show how light can make a difference in places and situations where people feel vulnerable, such as conflicts, or times of disruption and environmental crisis. It also asked if there is a role for light to help prevent or manage a crisis?

The top prize-winning project went to Clarissa Concilio from Denmark. Her project,‘Beskut’, seeks to improve the well-being of refugee children with sleep disorders. It’s not uncommon for such children to have nightmares or difficulties in sleeping or falling asleep. Often this is a consequence of the trauma they have experienced, and, in some cases, this can contribute to mental health issues such as PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

Beskut is a toy that emits a beating red light (640nm) that relaxes the child and lulls them to sleep. It is the perfect toy to be given to children when they first arrive at a refugee camp. A gentle movement of the light, simulating a breath, relaxes the child, soothing anxiety and stress. When the child falls asleep, the movement stops (as measured by an accelerometer) and the light slowly dims down. When the child is awake or distressed, the light intensity increases to calm the child.

A pair of Australians also clinched the third prize. Mikhael Geordie Amadeus and Priscillia Sanjaya of NSW, Australia, caught the eye of the judges with a highly topical project called ‘BLASt’. The name is an acronym for Bushfire Lighting Alert System and envisages a smart streetlight system that provides a visual threat assessment to warn people of the potential risk of a bushfire.
 

Sensors installed in the BLASt smart pole monitor local air quality, humidity, and the temperature in real-time. The environmental data is then relayed across the network and communicated to surrounding residents through a combination of LED Lights and an E-INK display. An LED strip on the body of the smart pole gives a quick indication of the threat level. Green hues indicate a low fire risk, orange indicates high, while red indicates a severe fire risk.

“Great to see the submissions addressing this year’s challenging thematic with innovation and some lateral thinking.”   Lee Barker Field – AECOM
 

"The competition entries show that lighting has not only the power to delight, but also to improve, transform and save lives.”  Vesna Petrisin
 

“The CLUE competition provides a unique perspective on lighting and social impact issues. Providing students and young professionals worldwide with a challenging brief that strives to find solutions to real world issues of importance through the application and impact of light.  Participating as a judge was an educational and rewarding process.”  Kenneth Douglas - HLB Lighting Design
 

“Inspiring to see how the entrants used their personal perspective on emergency to inform their ideas.”  Mike Simpson, Signify
 

“Amazing things happen when you collaborate as a team.”    Sylvia Bistrong – ISP Design