The Soundscape Indices (SSID) Protocol: A Method for Urban Soundscape Surveys—Questionnaires with Acoustical and Contextual Information

Mitchell, Andrew; Oberman, Tin; Aletta, Francesco; Erfanian, Mercede; Kachlicka, Magdalena; Lionello, Matteo; Kang, Jian

doi:10.3390/app10072397

Cited by 85 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…The procedure and equipment for the recordings are described extensively in Ref. [26], as they were part of a larger international soundscape survey campaign. In general, at each location binaural measurements were performed by an operator with a calibrated portable recorder (SQobold, HEAD acoustics GmbH) with head-mounted microphones (BHS II, HEAD acoustics GmbH) during weekdays' day-time, across 1-4 sessions in different days, each lasting 3-5 hours.…”

Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The clusters have been labelled as: Cluster 1 -Quiet Areas; Cluster 2 -Active areas; Cluster 3 -Traflcdominated areas Table 2 shows the basic descriptive statistics of the psychoacoustic features for the 11 locations according to cluster membership; when combining those patterns with information about dominant sound sources as derived from data from Ref. [26], the three clusters could be labelled as: Traffic-dominated areas (locations: CAM, EUS), Active areas (locations: RPJ, RUS, SPC, SPR, TAT, TOR), and Quiet areas (locations: MAR, PAN, RPF). Traffic-dominated areas are on major roads, where road traffic noise is the dominant sound source.…”

Section: Effect Of the Urban Setting On Sound Levels Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Assessing the changing urban sound environment during the COVID-19 lockdown period using short-term acoustic measurements

et al. 2020

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The implementation of lockdown measures due to the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in wide-ranging social and environmental implications. Among the environmental impacts is a decrease in urban noise levels which has so far been observed at the city scale via noise mapping efforts conducted through the framework of the Environmental Noise Directive. This study aims to understand how lockdown measures have manifested at a local level to better determine how the person-level experience of the urban soundscape has been affected and how these affects differ across urban space typologies. Taking London as a case study, a series of 30-second binaural recordings were taken at 11 locations representing a cross-section of urban public spaces with varying compositions of sound sources during Spring 2019 (pre-lockdown, N = 620) and Spring 2020 (during-lockdown, N = 481). Five acoustic and psychoacoustic metrics (LAeq, LA10, LA90, Loudness, Sharpness) were calculated for each recording and their changes from the pre-lockdown scenario to the lockdown scenario are investigated. Clustering analysis was performed which grouped the locations into 3 types of urban settings based on their acoustic characteristics. An average reduction of 5.4 dB (LAeq) was observed, however significant differences in the degree of reduction were found across the locations, ranging from a 10.7 dB to a 1.2 dB reduction. This study confirms the general reduction in noise levels due to the nationally imposed lockdown measures, identifies trends which vary depending on the urban context and discusses the implications for the limits of urban noise reduction.

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Section: Acoustic Measurementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effect Of the Urban Setting On Sound Levels Reductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the changing urban sound environment during the COVID-19 lockdown period using short-term acoustic measurements

et al. 2020

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“…Similarly to the ongoing research for urban soundscape indices [79,80], indoor soundscape indices would allow designers to be able to predict the perceived acoustic comfort inside buildings during the design stage, thus overcoming current soundscape prediction limits.…”

Section: How Can Indoor Soundscapes Be Measured?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustics for Supportive and Healthy Buildings: Emerging Themes on Indoor Soundscape Research

et al. 2020

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The focus of the building industry and research is shifting from delivering satisfactory spaces to going beyond what is merely acceptable with a wave of new research and practice dedicated to exploring how the built environment can support task performance and enhance people’s health and well-being. The present study addresses the role of acoustics in this paradigm shift. Indoor soundscape research has recently emerged as an approach that brings a perceptual perspective on building and room acoustics in order to shape built environments that “sound good” according to building occupants’ preference and needs. This paper establishes an initial discussion over some of the open questions in this field of research that is still in an embryonic stage. A thematic analysis of structured interviews with a panel of experts offered a range of perspectives on the characterization, management, and design of indoor soundscapes and health-related outcomes. The discussion pointed out the importance of both perceptual and multisensory research and integrated participatory design practices to enable a holistic view regarding the complex building–user interrelations and the design of just cities. Soundscape methodologies tailored to the peculiarities of indoor soundscapes can help to measure and predict the human perceptual response to the acoustic stimuli in context, thus reducing the risk of mismatches between expected and real building experiences. This perceptual perspective is expected to widen the scientific evidence for the negative and positive impacts of the acoustic environment on human health, well-being, and quality of life. This will support prioritizing the role of acoustics in building design and challenge many current design practices that are based on a noise control approach.

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“…Thus, the main differences among the experimental protocols concern the instrumentation used for the measurement of acoustic and other environmental factors. The latter factors (primarily the visual aspect) should not be neglected, as there is clear evidence in the literature that merely examining the acoustic level is not sufficient for predicting the assessed soundscape quality, and that a more holistic method of characterizing the environment is required [83]. Many different experimental protocols are described in the literature and the guidelines reported in the ISO/TS 12913 Part 2 are intended to harmonize the methods used to gather environmental and perceptual data.…”

Section: Outline Of Experimental Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Traditional Guided Soundwalk (GUIDE): Very Detailed, High Accuracy, Short-Term The acquisition of the environmental physical data is performed by an expert experimenter which is, usually, in charge of undertaking the acoustic measurements by using appropriate instrumentation and according to specific experimental protocols. To take account of the multidimensional features of the environment, upgraded experimental protocols have been proposed, such as in [83,84], including not only sound level meter and binaural recordings, but also spatial audio (i.e., Ambisonics) and 360 • video recordings. These recordings could be included in archives, also shared on the web, that could be used in laboratory experiments with fully-immersive virtual reality trials.…”

Section: Outline Of Experimental Protocolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smartphone-Based Participatory Soundscape Mapping for a More Sustainable Acoustic Environment

Brambilla

Pedrielli

2020

Sustainability

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The urban environmental planning, a fundamental dynamic process for cities’ sustainability, could benefit from the soundscape approach, dealing with the perception of the acoustic environment in which sound is considered as a resource rather than a waste (noise). Noise and soundscape maps are useful tools for planning mitigation actions and for communication with citizens. Both mappings can benefit from crowdsourcing and participatory sound monitoring that has been made possible due to the large use of internet connections and mobile devices with dedicated apps. This paper is a “scoping review” to provide an overview of the potential, benefits, and drawbacks of participatory noise monitoring in noise and soundscape mapping applications, while also referring to metrological aspects. Gathering perceptual data on soundscapes by using digital questionnaires will likely be more commonly used than printed questionnaires; thus, the main differences between the experimental protocols concern the measurement of acoustic data. The authors propose to classify experimental protocols for in-field soundscape surveys into three types (GUIDE, MONITOR, and SMART) to be selected according to the survey’s objectives and the territorial extension. The main future developments are expected to be related to progress in smartphone hardware and software, to the growth of social networks data analysis, as well as to the implementation of machine learning techniques.

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The Soundscape Indices (SSID) Protocol: A Method for Urban Soundscape Surveys—Questionnaires with Acoustical and Contextual Information

Cited by 85 publications

References 36 publications

Assessing the changing urban sound environment during the COVID-19 lockdown period using short-term acoustic measurements

Assessing the changing urban sound environment during the COVID-19 lockdown period using short-term acoustic measurements

Acoustics for Supportive and Healthy Buildings: Emerging Themes on Indoor Soundscape Research

Smartphone-Based Participatory Soundscape Mapping for a More Sustainable Acoustic Environment

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