Acoustic Quality and Health in Urban Environments – The SALVE Project

Abstract

Background sounds of urban regions have been a concern of architecture and construction engineering for years. In the context of health research however, sound has been restricted to the health risk factor noise, thus reduced to sound decibel levels. Accordingly, noise mitigation measures aim exclusively at the reduction of noise level below a certain threshold. Soundscapes on the other hand, comprise all acoustic events of the natural, physical and human environment, which are determined by sound level, frequency, time and space. Soundscape Ecology which includes the study of spatio-temporal heterogeneity of sounds in different landscapes, provides a suitable methodical approach to analyse the relationships between soundscapes, the built environment and human health. This paper presents SALVE (Acoustic Quality and Health in Urban Environments), a two year interdisciplinary pilot project that started in October 2018 and involves the disciplines of public health and spatial planning. The project aims at the identification of criteria for health-promoting soundscapes in cities. By making year long direct and automated auditory measurements of a robust landuse sample in the city of Bochum, located in the highly urbanized Ruhr Area of Germany, one of the largest multi-seasonal urban soundscape datasets will be generated. These data will be merged with health data from the longitudinal, population-based Heinz Nixdorf Recall (HNR) study. Spatio-statistical models will be further developed to analyse health effects of different types of soundscapes in urban neighborhoods. The project serves as a starting point for an innovative and comprehensive approach to understanding the effects of sound quality on urban public health beyond noise protection. Additionally, knowledge will be gained for the development of solution based health-promoting strategies in spatial planning.