Ambient sound assessment of urban environments: field studies in two French cities

Raimbault, Manon; Lavandier, Catherine; Bérengier, Michel

doi:10.1016/s0003-682x(03)00061-6

Cited by 130 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Following the protocol of a previous experiment carried out by Witchel and colleagues [10], three instrumental pieces of music from contrasting genres (namely classical, jazz, and ambient electronic music) were used to ensure a high level of inclusiveness, involving different social groups in terms of age and gender [17]. It has been affirmed that conventional acoustic parameters for noise measurement-e.g., weighted sound pressure levels (SPLs)-are not sufficient for the adequate measurement of soundscape [18][19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Signal Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Study on the Influence of Soundscapes on People’s Behaviour in an Open Public Space

et al. 2016

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Several studies have investigated how environmental sounds and music can modulate people's behaviours, particularly in marketing research. However, there are relatively few examples of research about such relationships with a focus on the management of urban public spaces. The current study investigated an open public space used mainly as a pedestrian crossing to analyse the relationship between the audio stimuli and peoples' behaviours. An experiment relying on covert behavioural observation was performed. During the experiment, three different music stimuli and a control condition (i.e., no music) were reproduced in order to find out firstly whether music compared to no music could elicit an increase in the number of people stopping in the investigated area, and secondly whether music is associated with a longer duration of stay for those who stop. Results showed that the presence of music had no effect on the number of people stopping in the area, but it had a statistically significant effect on the duration of stay for those who stopped. The above findings support the idea that people felt more invited to stay in the area with music rather than with no music, and suggest that the acoustical manipulation of the existing sound environment could provide soundscape strategies capable of promoting social cohesion in public spaces.

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Section: Signal Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

An Experimental Study on the Influence of Soundscapes on People’s Behaviour in an Open Public Space

et al. 2016

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“…Also, during the last decade, various studies focused on characterizing the quality of sound environments directly from acoustics measurements [4], [10], [12], [16], [21], [22]. These approaches are encouraged by novel acoustic mapping techniques based on low-cost sensor networks, or participative measurements, which allow obtaining sound maps with a higher spatial resolution, while being sensitive to all kind of sound sources constituting the sound environment [23]- [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Soundscape Pleasantness Using perceptual Assessments and Acoustic Measurements Along Paths in Urban Context

Aumond¹,

Can²,

Coensel³

et al. 2017

Acta Acustica united with Acustica

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Mapping the pleasantness of an urban environment is an alternative approach, closer to the city dweller's perception, than standardized sound levels cartography. This study reports on modeling pleasantness in urban context using perceptual assessments and sound measurements for specific locations during an urban walk. These assessments have been collected from four groups of approximately ten participants on 19 different assessment locations, along a 2,1 km-long path traveled in both directions. Simultaneously, ⅓ octave band sound levels and audio were recorded. Perceptual and physical models of pleasantness are proposed for specific locations based on multiple linear regressions. A multilevel analysis was performed, and it is shown that a perceptual model that includes perceived loudness joined to the perceived time of presence of traffic, voices and birds explains 90% of the pleasantness variance due to the sound environment variations. Physical models that include the original acoustic indicators that are most correlated with perceptual variables explain 85% of this variance. Thanks to these models, a unique averaged pleasantness value is defined for each assessment location from the perceptual or physical collected assessments. The Pearson's correlation coefficient between the averaged perceived pleasantness and the modeled values from perceptual assessment reaches r(19)=0.98, and r(19)=0.97, with the modeled values from physical measurements. These results make it possible to consider the use of this kind of models in a cartographic context. As the path was traveled in both directions, the presentation-order effect has also been assessed, and it has been found that path direction did not have a significant impact on the pleasantness assessment at specific locations, except when very strong sound environment changes occurred. Finally, the study gives some insights about the retrospective global pleasantness assessment for urban walks. For very short walks between two assessment locations, a recency effect is shown. Nevertheless, this effect doesn't seem to be significant when longer routes are assessed.

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“…However, as previous research has found, the acoustic environment cannot be effectively improved only by noise control strategies [11]. A more general concept than noise is soundscape, which considers not only unfavourable noises, but also desirable environmental sounds [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Birdsong As an Element of the Urban Sound Environment: A Case Study Concerning the Area of Warnemünde in Germany

Liu¹,

Kang²,

Behm³

2014

Acta Acustica united with Acustica

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SummaryBirds are common species in urban ecosystems and birdsong is an important element of many urban sound environments. Perceptions of birdsong loudness, based on a case study in Warnemünde, a coastal area in Germany, were analysed in terms of its role in urban sound environment, the relationships with other sounds, spatiotemporal characteristics, as well as the relationships with underlying landscape characteristics. An important and positive role of birdsong in urban soundscape perception in the study area was recognised. The analysis of the relationships between birdsong perception and other sounds suggested that, although birds could adjust their songs with continual urban traffic sounds, they are still sensitive to excessive sounds related to human appearance (adult voice, child voice and footstep) or human activities (construction sounds, music). The spatiotemporal patterns of perceived loudness of birdsong suggested the adapted patterns of bird species in urban areas. Perceived loudness of birdsong showed close relationships with the underlying landscape characteristics indicated by a series of landscape spatial pattern indices. Positive relationships were found with construction density, road density, vegetation density, as well as fragmentation status indicated by patch density, largest patch index, landscape shape index, fractal dimension and contagion.

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Ambient sound assessment of urban environments: field studies in two French cities

Cited by 130 publications

References 9 publications

An Experimental Study on the Influence of Soundscapes on People’s Behaviour in an Open Public Space

An Experimental Study on the Influence of Soundscapes on People’s Behaviour in an Open Public Space

Modeling Soundscape Pleasantness Using perceptual Assessments and Acoustic Measurements Along Paths in Urban Context

Birdsong As an Element of the Urban Sound Environment: A Case Study Concerning the Area of Warnemünde in Germany

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