Estimating leisure noise in Spanish cities

Differences Between Road Traffic and Leisure Noise in Urban Areas. Developing a Model for Automatic Identification

“…The noise due to leisure activities is not only present inside bars, pubs or discos, butalso in streets, where young people usually do social activities or drink in the so called leisure areas; therefore, the most important environmental noise source is people speaking in the street, and less the leisure venues [15]. These zones are usually placed in residential areas where this kind of noise goes together with other noise sources liker oad traffic.…”

“…However, there are other different sources likem usic of the venue places or traffic noise in nearby streets [15]. The average leisure noise spectra showmore energy content in frequencies between 315 Hz and 2kHz due to the human voice contribution.…”

“…the measurement were taken more than 1.5 metres from anyr eflecting surface and more than 1metre from the road when the street allows it, in other cases the measurement were corrected. These are 30 seconds recordings because the leisure noise behaviour is steady enough to consider that the measurement is respresentative of leisure noise in the city [15], therefore it is necessary to takeinto account that the noise levelv ariations have not been considered, only their owncaracteristics.…”

“…The measurements were taken with SoNoScout (B&K equipment)following the soundwalker technique which is used to record soundscapes [24,15], and also taking into account the environmental noise law [18,25] i.e. the measurement were taken more than 1.5 metres from anyr eflecting surface and more than 1metre from the road when the street allows it, in other cases the measurement were corrected.…”

“…However, there is areduced number of studies focused on leisure noise [14,15,16,17]. Furthermore, the regulations on environmental noise in the EU do not specifically covernoise generated as aresult of leisure activities [18,19].…”