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Sustainability
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Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities
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Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2022) | Viewed by 14323

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Juan Miguel Navarro

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research Group in Advanced Telecommunications (GRITA), Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), 30107 Guadalupe, Spain
Interests: sustainable acoustics; environmental acoustics; noise mapping; noise control and management; sound processing; internet of things for environmental monitoring; wireless sensor networks; smart cities services for sustainability; machine learning for sound and acoustics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jaume Segura-Garcia

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Computer Science, ETSE, Universitat de València, 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain
Interests: IoT; WSN; Smart Cities; signal processing; artificial intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, designers, architects, engineers and city managers have paid increasing attention to the Smart City paradigm. Smart Cities are an innovation in urban planning, based on the continuous learning of urban developments, exploiting the potential of technology and promoting sustainability.

Along with the concept of Smart Cities, the remote monitoring of environmental parameters is increasing their presence in society, being one of the scientific fields with a great evolution over the last decade. This has led to the emergence of new strategies and tools for the analysis and the management of environmental pollution, with the help of advances in sensors, computing and communications technologies. 

Among all the environmental factors, noise pollution is one of the main concerns of modern cities because of its effects on the quality of life, health and livability of cities. Current research has focused on the definition of acoustic indices to evaluate urban sound environment, together with methods and tools to measure, analyze and predict them, improving the management models and integrating them in the Smart City platform. Within this common space, some related topics can be highlighted:

  • Definition and analysis of urban acoustic indices.
  • Measurement and evaluation of sound environment in urban spaces.
  • Wireless acoustic sensor network design and deployment.
  • Integration of noise monitoring systems with Smart City platform and other services.
  • Management systems for noise pollution in cities.
  • Big data models and implementations for noise levels analysis and smart management.
  • Statistical and machine learning techniques to analyze and to predict noise pollution in cities.
  • Next generation networks integration with Smart City infrastructures (including SDN, Edge and Cloud computing)

This Special Issue aims at enlarging this knowledge, and welcomes original research papers, case studies, critical perspectives and viewpoint articles on, but not limited to, the above subjects.

Dr. Juan Miguel Navarro
Dr. Jaume Segura-Garcia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • acoustic environment
  • noise evaluation and analysis
  • Smart City
  • noise pollution management
  • wireless acoustic sensor network
  • Internet of Things
  • big data
  • NGN
  • machine learning

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 4277 KiB  
Article
Study of Noise and Vibration Impacts to Buildings Due to Urban Rail Transit and Mitigation Measures
by Ying Hao, Haifeng Qi, Shengchun Liu, Victor Nian and Zhongyao Zhang
Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 3119; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14053119 - 07 Mar 2022
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3524
Abstract
The developments in urban rail transit (URT) construction are associated with the benefits of moving people efficiently and the negative impacts of noise and vibrations caused to surroundings. Despite a proliferation of studies conducted throughout the world, very few studies employed the field [...] Read more.
The developments in urban rail transit (URT) construction are associated with the benefits of moving people efficiently and the negative impacts of noise and vibrations caused to surroundings. Despite a proliferation of studies conducted throughout the world, very few studies employed the field measurement approach due to various limitations. Using a metropolitan city, Tianjin (China), as an example, field measurement was set up to monitor the indoor vibration and noise spectrum in buildings near urban rapid transit lines to establish a baseline as well as the effectiveness of corresponding mitigation measures, namely wheel-rail polishing and train speed reduction. While our study suggests a maximum 6 dB reduction in indoor vibration, the effectiveness of noise and vibration reduction measures depends on the attenuation of the main frequency corresponding to the secondary radiation noise of the indoor vibration excitation in the building. In our field test, the peaks of the frequency spectrum were found to be 40, 50, 63 and 80 Hz. The secondary radiation noise attenuation and vibration were invariant to the change in frequency spectrum. Mitigation measures such as polishing may cause vibration frequency to peak in non-main frequency spectrums. URT speed reduction will lead to vibration and noise attenuation energy being concentrated at around 50 Hz. Given the presently inconsistent and widely varying industrial and international standards, this study can provide important field measurement data supporting future development in standards, regulation and legislation with respect to URT development, especially in mature townships. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities)
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18 pages, 16167 KiB  
Article
Urban Sound Auralization and Visualization Framework—Case Study at IHTApark
by Josep Llorca-Bofí, Christian Dreier, Jonas Heck and Michael Vorländer
Sustainability 2022, 14(4), 2026; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14042026 - 10 Feb 2022
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3293
Abstract
In the context of acoustic urban planning, the use of noise mappings is a worldwide well-established practice. Therefore, the noise levels in an urban environment are calculated based on models of the sound sources, models of the physical sound propagation effects and the [...] Read more.
In the context of acoustic urban planning, the use of noise mappings is a worldwide well-established practice. Therefore, the noise levels in an urban environment are calculated based on models of the sound sources, models of the physical sound propagation effects and the position of the receivers in the area of interest. However, the noise mapping method is limited to sound levels in frequency bands due to missing temporal and spectral information of the sound signals. This, in turn, leads to missing information about the qualitative sound properties, as they can be evaluated in psychoacoustic parameters. Beyond the scope of the classical noise mapping, auralization and physically-based simulation of sound fields can be applied to urban scenarios in the context of urban soundscape analysis. By supporting the auralization technology with a visual counterpart of the urban space, a plausible virtual representation of a real environment can be achieved. The presented framework combines the possibilities of the open-source auralization tool Virtual Acoustics with 3D visualization. In order to enable studies with natural human response or for public communication of urban design projects, those virtual scenes can be either reproduced with immersive technologies—such head-mounted displays (HMD)—or using online video platforms and traditional playback devices. The paper presents an overview of what physical principles can already be simulated, which technological considerations need to be taken into account, and how to set up such environment for auralization and visualization of urban scenes. We present the framework by the case study of IHTApark. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities)
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17 pages, 3593 KiB  
Article
Effects of Evocative Audio-Visual Installations on the Restorativeness in Urban Parks
by Massimiliano Masullo, Luigi Maffei, Aniello Pascale, Vincenzo Paolo Senese, Simona De Stefano and Chi Kwan Chau
Sustainability 2021, 13(15), 8328; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158328 - 26 Jul 2021
Cited by 16 | Viewed by 3337
Abstract
Road traffic noise is responsible for several negative health effects for citizens in modern cities. Inside urban parks, which citizens use for social inclusion and cohesion, psychological and physical restoration, and physical activities, road traffic noise may significantly reduce the potential of these [...] Read more.
Road traffic noise is responsible for several negative health effects for citizens in modern cities. Inside urban parks, which citizens use for social inclusion and cohesion, psychological and physical restoration, and physical activities, road traffic noise may significantly reduce the potential of these places to induce or enhance well-being. Although access restriction schemes and screens could be effective solutions to limit noise inside urban park areas, preserving their potential regenerative role may engender mobility, social, aesthetic, and architectural issues. Due to the positive effects that natural elements and water sounds can have on human perception, and based on the previous findings of the beneficial effects of audio-visual installations, this paper investigates the possibility of using audio-visual installations that simply evoke some natural features to improve the restoration of individuals inside urban parks. The study has been carried out using immersive virtual environments in two different experimental laboratory sessions in Hong Kong (China) and Aversa (Italy). The results showed that the positive effects provided by evocative installations were similar to those provided by traditional installations. Furthermore, the effects on the restoration increased as the installations became larger and included enveloping shapes. Furthermore, we found that the amount of evocative water installations’ material was responsible for changes in restoration. In contrast, the Chinese groups were less influenced by these installations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities)
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13 pages, 611 KiB  
Article
Multilevel Annoyance Modelling of Short Environmental Sound Recordings
by Ferran Orga, Andrew Mitchell, Marc Freixes, Francesco Aletta, Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès and Maria Foraster
Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 5779; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13115779 - 21 May 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2173
Abstract
The recent development and deployment of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASN) present new ways to address urban acoustic challenges in a smart city context. A focus on improving quality of life forms the core of smart-city design paradigms and cannot be limited to [...] Read more.
The recent development and deployment of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASN) present new ways to address urban acoustic challenges in a smart city context. A focus on improving quality of life forms the core of smart-city design paradigms and cannot be limited to simply measuring objective environmental factors, but should also consider the perceptual, psychological and health impacts on citizens. This study therefore makes use of short (1–2.7 s) recordings sourced from a WASN in Milan which were grouped into various environmental sound source types and given an annoyance rating via an online survey with N=100 participants. A multilevel psychoacoustic model was found to achieve an overall R2=0.64 which incorporates Sharpness as a fixed effect regardless of the sound source type and Roughness, Impulsiveness and Tonality as random effects whose coefficients vary depending on the sound source. These results present a promising step toward implementing an on-sensor annoyance model which incorporates psychoacoustic features and sound source type, and is ultimately not dependent on sound level. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Urban Noise Analysis and Management in Smart Cities)
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