Abstract

This project seeks to identify safe sky viewing parks within the City of Vancouver at night. The disappearance of the Milky Way from our night skies has become increasingly common, especially in urbanized areas; and contributing factors include the adverse effects of light pollution such as increased (urban) sky glow. As a result, ideal dark sky locations within cities are often attributed to parks and reserves that are shielded from light pollution. However, to address potential public safety risks that may be associated with accessing public spaces at night, our project integrates two distinct measures for safety in conjunction with dark sky locations to identify ideal sites for sky viewing. The results of our two multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) analyses identify 10 parks and 5 golf courses within the City of Vancouver to be ideal locations which we narrow to the following 3 parks in our discussion: Humm Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, and Spanish Banks Beach Park. We also explore potential uncertainties and errors in our discussion to provide transparency in our analyses along with suggestions for future studies.