Ricerc@Sapienza

Ultra-Violet (UV) radiation covers only a minimal part of solar spectrum (5%) but produces severe effects on human health. Everyone is exposed to Sun but some outdoor workers categories are exposed not only in their leisure time but also during their working activities. To protect outdoor workers health, daily estimates of UV radiation are needed and without a national service providing a measured UV Index (UVI) in the Italian territory, UVI forecasting methods are welcomed.

The Ultra-Violet Index (UVI) is widespread used to communicate the UV radiation intensity to the general public. The knowledge of the UVI value and of its daily variation is essential for many techniques for monitoring the personal exposure to UV radiation. The UVI values are usually provided by the meteorological services and nowadays it is very common to find UVI forecast tools even in smartphone apps. In this paper, with the aim to evaluate the prediction accuracy of six smartphone apps, a measurement campaign of UVI has been carried out.