Investigation of Technological Research Trend on the Pacific Basin Lighting Congress -LUX PACIFICA-, and on the Lighting Culture of the Conference Host Country

1. Introduction

 The Literary Information Committee (a subordinate organization of the Journal Edition Committee of the Illumination Engineering Institute of Japan) has summarized the domestic and international papers on studies related to the fields of illumination and recent technological research trends and have reported on them in this journal periodically ^{1) _ 9)}.

 This report will cover the changes in technological research trends in each technological field during the period from the first conference of the Pacific Basin Lighting Congress -LUX PACIFICA- (held in Shanghai in 1989) through the fourth conference (held in New Delhi in 2002), as well as the activity status at each conference, the response of our country, and lastly our impression of each host city including the lighting culture of the conference host country.

2. Overview of the Conference ^{10) _ 14)}

2.1 What is the Pacific Basin Lighting Congress -LUX PACIFICA-?

 A scheme for operating and holding the Pacific Basin Lighting Congress was examined comprehensively by the members on the Pacific coast who attended the CIE Midterm General Conference and the European Lighting Congress (Lux Europe) in 1985, which included the countries of North America, Japan, Australia, and so on, and the first conference was held in Shanghai of the People's Republic of China four years later, in 1989.

 This congress has held an international conference every four years at which researchers, engineers, lighting designers, and so on associated with illumination in the Pacific coast countries have assembled in order to make presentations, discuss, and exchange information on the results of engineering and design projects related to illumination, as well as to promote international exchange, with the aim of developing and advancing of illumination technology in the participating countries.

2.2 Briefing of Overall Status

 The first conference was held at Shanghai in April 1989, as mentioned above, and the succeeding conferences have been held uniformly once every four years, i.e. the second conference was at Bangkok, the Kingdom of Thailand in November 1993; the third conference was in Nagoya, Japan in October 1997; and the most recent fourth conference was in New Delhi, the Republic of India in September 2002.

 Fig. 1 shows the total number of participants and presented themes at each conference and those of Japan. It is known from this figure that the fourth conference had an outstanding number of participants. It is considered the reason for this is that the International Lighting Exhibition, Lii 2002 at Pragati Maidan New Delhi (September 6 through 9), in which eighty-one enterprises and organizations exhibited and which was very well attended, was held in parallel with the conference, and many attendees of the exhibition also attended the conference. On the contrary, the number of the presented themes was quite small, 73. This was due to the influence of the Indo-Pakistani dispute and we have heard that there were around 50 presentations withdrawn from the initial number of presentation applications.

Fig. 1 Changes in the Numbers of Participants and Presentations by Conference