By: Sayeh Dastgheib-Beheshti, IDSA
This is the second year I have proposed projects to University of Toronto’s First-year engineering students, and I wanted to share some of the outcomes of the most recent project. Engineering Strategies and Practice is a remarkable course in which individuals and businesses define problems for teams of first-year engineering students to tackle. The goal is to create open-ended projects that offer teams of students from every disciplines in engineering the real-world motivation and hands-on learning for applying the technical skills they learn in engineering design. The project steps include creating a detailed project requirements document to properly define the problem in engineering terms, develop a number of possible solutions which are then ranked according to client requirements and proceeding with the development of a final recommended design.
I believe that if we want to see our society change for the better, we need to change the way we assign value and learn to consider the larger social good and move beyond a simplified economic consideration. It was important for me to propose a problem that went beyond the traditional engineering considerations of technical improvements, cost reduction and optimization associated with private goods and framed the problem in terms of intrinsic versus instrumental value. At the end of the day, the question I wanted to highlight whether the lives of migratory birds mattered because of the value they provided us ( instrumental ) or whether as creatures of this planet, they were valuable just because they existed ( intrinsic ).
Toronto is situated on a main migratory path, and while people are aware that many birds migrate in the spring and fall, they don’t realize that it happens at night. Birds often become disorientated by inappropriate and excessive use of artificial lighting, referred to as light pollution. Based on alarming data I had seen regarding migratory bird deaths caused by the bright lights of downtown Toronto at night, I proposed a project about reducing migratory bird mortality by reducing light pollution.
Advocacy efforts, by such groups as Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) Canada, have led to the establishment of Canadian Standards Association’s (CSA) bird-friendly building standard, designed to reduce bird-building collisions (CSA standard A460). According to a study “Recent estimates suggest that 25 million birds die each year from window collisions in Canada” (A First Estimate for Canada of the Number of Birds Killed by Colliding with Building Windows – Craig S. Machtans, Christopher H. R. Wedeles and Erin M. Bayne). Although home windows collectively kill more birds, the combination of night light emissions and expansive glazed surfaces at mid and high-rise buildings together can kill more birds per structure. A disproportionately high number of these fatalities occur in Toronto, Ontario. This is due to its location adjacent to Lake Ontario; at the confluence of the Atlantic and Mississippi Migratory Flyways, an abundance of vegetated ravines and built structures.
During the Spring and Fall migration seasons, the staff at Toronto Wildlife Centre see a huge jump in the number of injured migratory birds being brought in with life-threatening injuries.
My project was assigned to two teams of students and they each took a different approach.
The first team was comprised of five TrackOne students who were interested in exploring all disciplines of engineering. From the start, all students were extremely interested in birds and were already aware of many of the issues around human-affected migratory bird mortality. After researching bird mortality, this team decided to target solving the issue of light pollution. Since birds are attracted to the city by unnecessary bright lights at night, reducing these lights would reduce the number of bird strikes in the city. Thus, they focused our project on reducing light transmittance – which is the ratio of light that passes from one side of a surface to the other – from commercial office buildings at night. They put an emphasis on affordable solutions in order to incentivize building owners into implementing them.
Project manager Sofia Gonzalez Martinez says, “During our idea generation process, we focused on solutions that would target windows, lighting fixtures, or the behaviour of individuals in an office space.” The team proposed a solution based on a window film that uses electrodeposition technology to turn opaque when a voltage is applied to it. In its opaque state, the film lets less than 5% of light pass through, reducing light transmittance significantly. Using software technology, the film automatically activates at sunset and turns clear again at sunrise. This means that 95% of light from commercial office buildings is prevented from contributing to light pollution at night. The film is also affordable to manufacture and install, and is extremely durable, lasting up to 15 years. With such significant reduction in light pollution, the team hopes that this decreases the number of migratory birds that stray from their paths and enter the city, where they are in harm’s way.”
Illustration from this article: https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(17)30001-6
The second team consisted of six first-year electrical engineering students who were excited to use their combined passion for electricity as well as explore every possible avenue to determine a solution.
Team leader Sam Chowdhury says, “Our research showed that human behaviour was at the root of the light pollution from tall office buildings which caused bird collisions. Most office workers either do not have access to control lighting or simply forget to turn off the lights when they exit the building which causes the additional problem of energy waste.” Although the team found many existing solutions, they did not overcome the obstacle presented by the cost of fitting them into existing buildings. It was clear to the team that they needed to create a design that could be implemented as a retrofit with existing standard lightbulb sockets and reduced the amount of light trespassing through the windows of tall office buildings.
Using idea-generating techniques taught in engineering, the team came up with over seventy ideas. By discussing and comparing those ideas to the design objectives, they were able to rank their best ideas and determine that the Localized Automatic Lighting design (LAL) was the top solution to the problem. This concept incorporates motion sensors and dimmers with light sensors into light bulbs that use standard sockets. This eliminates the need for a centralized control system, in which one motion sensor or dimmer controls multiple lights and allows for localized lighting of areas with human activity. This decrease in light usage significantly reduces light pollution and saves energy. Through testing, illustrations, and theoretical calculations, it was further proven that the LAL design was the most cost-effective, efficient, and retrofit-able design.
As a final step the team compiled parts for a prototype, conducted theoretical cost analyses as well as illustrations and simulations using Autodesk 3D Studio Max and Chaos Group’s V-Ray Lighting Analysis System software, to further prove the effectiveness of the design and visualize the idea.
While each group of students reached a different outcome, what impressed me the most were the interesting discussions and dialog that went beyond the technicalities and presented the birds as valuable creatures.
We can’t continue to repeat the same actions and expect different results so if you want to protect the environment, I think it’s extremely worthwhile to begin with helping form the questions that we are asking. I hope that you join me in asking those difficult questions.
You can learn more about the programs that I mentioned at:
Fatal Light Awareness Program (Canada): https://flap.org/
Toronto Wildlife Centre: https://www.torontowildlifecentre.com/
Engineering Strategies and Practice program: http://www.esp.engineering.utoronto.ca/
