A Low-Cost and Noninvasive System for the Measurement and Detection of Faulty Streetlights

Badly lit roads lead to vehicle accidents and encourage crime. Therefore, it is important to rapidly detect and report faulty streetlights (FSLs) to the relevant authorities to keep roads safe. Currently, communities primarily depend on electrical inspectors to check streetlights regularly, which may result in long and unnecessary delays prior to repair. Recent studies have focused on adding a networking capability (i.e., a wireless sensor network) into street light poles to enable real-time status reports. However, a smart system that would incorporate sensors and network modules into every streetlight would be expensive; therefore, it would be nearly impossible to realize this system quickly. In this paper, we propose a noninvasive method for detecting faulty lights that involves designing special equipment, called the Hitchhiker, which could be installed on vehicles and would collect information about streetlights' intensity. This system would not require the modification of conventional streetlights. The collected data would be used to create illumination maps (IMaps), the analysis of which could help identify changes in lighting intensity in specific regions. As far as we know, this is an unprecedented approach; no other approaches use IMaps to find FSLs and consider cost and invasiveness. The proposed system could be extended to a citywide scale with minimal cost, and could be used as a complementary system for electrical inspectors possibly identifying FSLs sooner and shortening the duration of poor lighting on streets.