CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The availability of daylight in the Pompeian insula I.11 is studied as an indicator for activity it could have afforded. A documented reconstruction model of the insula is prepared with a particular focus in window openings, and including solar obstructions by the adjacent insulae. This model, enriched with a description of the local climate by a modern weather file, is subjected to zonal daylight simu- lation that employs RAYTRAVERSE and RADIANCE. PHOS4DTOOLS controls the simulation and the post-processing of results, comprising hourly records of horizontal and vertical illuminance in all rooms of the insula. This spatio-temporal description of the luminous conditions forms layers in a Geographical Information System, that is used in the evaluation of the data and to combine it with other sources. Illuminance thresholds are applied to each data-point to test for suitable conditions for contrast and colour vision. The typical affordances for visual tasks, and the fraction of daytime these are afforded by each room are assessed. The fraction of daytime when the requirement for contrast vision is met varies gradually within the covered spaces. The colour vision threshold dis- tinguishes locations that reach the required threshold either almost never or almost always. Most rooms of the insula are typically too dark for contrast vision, but each of the assessed units fea- tures at least one open or covered space that provides sufficient illuminance even for colour vision, raising questions about the spatio-temporal usage- and activity-patterns in the insula. It is hoped that the results complement archaeological sources to arrive at a better understanding of the archi- tecture of, and life in the insula. To overcome barriers imposed by the complicated reconstruction- and simulation-process, a correlation between simple geometrical features of a room and typical daylight conditions is presented. This is proposed as a means to draw early conclusions about pos- sible activities in a room, even if a complete reconstruction or advanced daylight simulation are not feasible.* Presentation: https://zenodo.org/records/10155395

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