Repair or Replacement of Non-working Street Lights The repair or replacement of non-working street lights in several areas of the city has caused hazardous driving conditions due to low visibility. The city has decided to make the repair and replacement of these lights a priority.
Identifying the problem: Although the city has already stated that nonworking street lights has the culprit to the problem the real problem is low visibility. At what level of light output is conditions considered acceptable; for instance is a 1000 watt bulb considered adequate for 500 feet of road? Is this acceptable for all roads? Is a residential area roads need different lighting requirements as a highway or what about historic areas that want to maintain a time period look and feel through the area? For this exercise we say that historic areas will not accrue changes under this program, residential areas need a 500 wattage bulb every 1000 feet, and highways need a 1000 watt bulb every 500 feet.
Understanding the problem Low visibility: Are current street lights working? If so, are the lights adequate to meet acceptable levels? If not, how far are the lights poles positioned apart? And what wattage of bulbs is being used? Do these meet the minimum standards set above?
Identifying Alternate solutions: If lighting is not meeting acceptable levels should more lights be added or should existing lights be replaced due to the inability of the current lights to provide adequate amount of light.
Selecting the best solution: Multiple solutions are possible; for every different type of road a different solution is possible. Example: A historic section will not have any changes, but highways with light poles spread 1000 feet apart with 1000 watt bulbs would need addition light poles added.
Step by Step: In this step is where all the data and standards come together in order to achieve step 5 Selecting the best solution. I could be argued that that the step by step solution should be done with all alternative solutions in order to achieve the best solution. Assuming your writing a computer program to resolve this problem a flow chart would better layout this than the rough outline below. All options or paths that could be taken by such a program are not represented below.
Is the road in a historic section of town? If yes, no changes will be made.
What is the type of road?
Does the current lighting meet the set standards for this type of road?
If not how far apart are the light poles? Install new light poles if needed
What watt bulbs are in the poles? Install higher wattage bulbs if needed
Test the solution: Since the low visibility has caused hazardous conditions I reasonable to compare traffic reports concerning accidents in the same areas to see if there has been a drop in reported accidents after installing the new lighting standards.
Represented above in my comments about each step multiple specific questions would arise causing addition questions to be asked in order to achieve a desired result for each specific instance at times after while asking these different questions I felt a need to return to previous steps several times. Each step revealed many different aspects to the problem; roughing the problem could have solved by asking; is the light working, if not fix it, however this was assuming the lights were the problem when low visibility was the problem, so one had to ask if the existing light were adequate, then that caused the question; what was adequate? Although, the problem of non-working street lights was given to us, it can be deducted that the original problem was an increase in traffic accidents in the town. In solving a problem as an algorithm you may need still need to answer heuristic questions such as what is considered adequate lighting, with no data to compare one must just say yes I can see better with a 1000 watt bulb than a 500 watt. Although I’m sure there is data that supports an accident reduction after achieving certain lighting result all the assumed data in this paper is fiction. It might be assumed from the above statement that I would believe that more steps need to be added, however I do believe that the steps are sufficient, possibly the only step I could add is a reevaluation step, but I believe the achieved by testing the results step. I eluded early in the paper that the putting the step by step before selecting the best solution could be argued however if you look at the steps more as a process, willing to revisit prior steps, than each step having to completed before the other this is resolved.