Browser simulator to visualize urban light pollution from real photometry

Municipal lighting planners, government engineers, and outdoor lighting manufacturers struggle to quantify and communicate urban light pollution: streetscape designs and fixture specs are often evaluated with spreadsheets and proprietary desktop tools that neither model skyglow accurately nor engage nontechnical stakeholders. That gap slows permitting, fuels public pushback, and complicates compliance with rising dark-sky ordinances. A browser-native simulator that ingests standard photometric formats (IES/LDT), ties into GIS, and renders physically-based, real-time skyglow and surface illuminance would let stakeholders compare scenarios in minutes without installing specialized software. Core offerings would include per-fixture photometry parsing, aggregate sky luminance maps, exportable compliance reports, and a lightweight API for integration; commercialized at a $30K average contract (software + consulting + integration) this targets roughly 200,000 municipal and industry users for a $6.0B addressable market. Delivering value requires rigorous validation against ground-truth measurements (SQM/meters) and explicit uncertainty reporting. Three secular trends make this attractive now: browser 3D (WebGL/WebGPU) reduces friction for stakeholders, IES/LDT ubiquity standardizes inputs, and growing regulatory focus on light pollution creates measurable demand—hence the project’s market score of 90/100 and revenue potential of 80/100. To stand out you must combine verifiable physical accuracy, sub-minute in‑browser scenario generation, seamless supplier dataset imports, and packaged consulting to close the trust gap; the main challenges are establishing credibility through validation, scaling performance for city-scale models, and forming partnerships with standards bodies and instrument vendors.