Measurement, Simulation and Design of Sound in Urban Spaces

Dear Colleagues,

From measures for protection against noise pollution to the optimisation of environmental comfort for specific outdoor/indoor functions, the acoustics of urban spaces has been demonstrated to have a great impact on human life. In recent years, scientific and public communities increased their awareness of perceived sound sources, and governments started to establish more accurate regulations. The latest physical limits, holistic indices, and techniques include, for example, decibels (dB, which helps to measure the intensity of sounds and predict noise annoyance thresholds), psychoacoustic descriptors (which helps describe sound sources in their characteristic spectra), soundscape descriptors (which help to include human perception in the environmental sound evaluation), and artificial intelligence (AI) for decoding and gathering more specific information during monitoring phases. The sound quality in urban spaces is not only a matter of physical limits; it is also key to human physical and psychological wellbeing, which makes it a challenge for the latest data analysis techniques. This Special Issue aims to gather major publications on projects and achievements which, from theoretical and practical perspectives, make innovative proposals regarding the Measurement, Simulation and Design of Sound in Urban Spaces. The scope relates to the contemporary field of environmental sound and soundscape research, but we are also interested in proposals on the monitoring and design of outdoor public spaces. The urban environment needs to be analysed according to both quantitative and qualitative parameters. The proposed papers should highlight their holistic approaches (physical sciences, machine learning, engineering sciences, building sciences, human and social sciences). Particular attention will be given to papers that show how urban spaces are constructed and drawn by psychoacoustics and soundscapes, but also how environmental sounds are produced and shaped by urban spaces. Finally, this Special Issue also aims to gather articles in different cultural and geographical contexts (on the five continents), at building, district, city and/or megalopolis scale.

Prof. Dr. Massimo Garai
Dr. Gioia Fusaro
Prof. Dr. Georgios E. Stavroulakis
Dr. Nikolaos M. Papadakis
Guest Editors

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