Search Results (38)

Streets play a crucial role in shaping urban soundscapes, influencing individual wellbeing and urban sustainability. Although urban soundscapes have been widely studied, research focusing on street soundscapes remains limited. This scoping review aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the main themes and methodologies used in recent street soundscape literature. Scopus and ScienceDirect databases were searched for journal articles and conference papers with the keywords “street and sound”. The review included articles published in English between 2000 and 2025. The selected studies focused on soundscapes in outdoor environments while offering insights into streetscape features. Articles that did not focus on perception of the street environment or report a sample size were excluded, resulting in 16 studies in the final review. Soundscapes were mostly examined in terms of noise annoyance (n = 6) and sound perception (n = 14), distinguishing between pleasant and unpleasant sounds. Natural elements are frequently identified as essential streetscape (n = 8) and soundscape components of streets (n = 3). These features are associated with positive perceptions, whereas traffic features are perceived negatively. The predominant methodological approach was laboratory studies (n = 10), with participant groups typically consisting of healthy adults. Sample sizes ranged from 10 to 1200. Overall, the literature points to a significant gap in research on the effect of street soundscapes on wellbeing, revealing that numerous streetscape characteristics remain unexplored and the link between soundscapes and street features has not been thoroughly examined. Full article

Kunqu Opera, hailed as the “ancestor of all Chinese operas”, plays a crucial role in preserving cultural identity and collective memory in the Jiangnan region. This research examines the acoustical traditions of Kunqu. Through expert interviews and thematic analysis, the study explores key acoustic elements, including vocal techniques and musical structures, and their symbolic and emotional impact. Five central themes emerged, including Kunqu’s role in collective memory, its function as a cultural symbol, the evolution of its transmission, the emotional resonance of its acoustic elements, and the modern challenges and opportunities for preservation. The findings highlight the importance of maintaining Kunqu’s cultural identity within acoustical heritage, while also recognizing the need for innovation in its transmission. This research contributes to the broader discussion on intangible cultural heritage and provides insights into how traditional art forms like Kunqu can be preserved amidst modernization. Full article

The application of the soundscape approach is becoming increasingly prevalent in the evaluation of indoor acoustic environments, including office environments. However, the formalisation and standardisation of soundscape assessment methods for offices remain in the early stages, highlighting the need for further development. This systematic review explores the methods and factors involved in soundscape assessments within office environments, which are intended to contribute to creating or improving comprehensive and widely accepted protocols. This review includes 41 studies, revealing that questionnaires (n = 36) are the most commonly used subjective tools, occasionally supplemented by interviews (n = 1). Some studies employ a combination of questionnaire and interview (n = 2), questionnaire and discussion (n = 1), or all three methods—questionnaire, interview, and discussion (n = 1). Meanwhile, direct acoustic measurements (n = 28) and cognitive tasks (n = 14) are often employed for objective evaluations. Additionally, the review categorises factors involved in objective and subjective soundscape assessments into acoustic and non-acoustic elements. It also identifies tools frequently used to assess the correlation between soundscapes and physical and psychological well-being. Collectively, this review underscores the critical factors for comprehensive soundscape assessments in office environments. Full article

Challenging behavior (CB) is a group of behaviors, reactions and symptoms due to dementia, which can be challenging for the caregivers. The study aims to research the influence of acoustics on CB in people with dementia (PwD). An ethnographic method was used to study the daily life of PwD in their nursing homes with a specific focus on how people react to everyday environmental sounds. Thirty-five residents were included in the sample based on purposeful, homogeneous group characteristics and sampling. Empirical data were collected using 24/7 participatory observations. The collected data were analyzed using a phenomenological–hermeneutical method: a naïve understanding, a structural analysis and a comprehensive understanding. The result shows that the onset of CB depends on whether the resident feels safe and is triggered by an excess or lack of stimuli. The excess or shortage of stimuli and whether and when it affects a person is personal. It depends on various factors, the person’s state and the time of day, the nature of the stimuli, familiarity, or strangeness is also a determining factor for the onset and progression of CB. The results can form an essential basis for developing soundscapes to make the PwD feel safe and reduce CB. Full article

Noise annoyance has been often reported as one of the main adverse effects of noise exposure on human health, and there is consensus that it relates to several factors going beyond the mere energy content of the signal. Research has historically focused on a limited set of sound sources (e.g., transport and industrial noise); only more recently is attention being given to more holistic aspects of urban acoustic environments and the role they play in the noise annoyance perceptual construct. This is the main approach promoted in soundscape studies, looking at both wanted and unwanted sounds. In this study, three specific aspects were investigated, namely: (1) the effect of different sound sources combinations, (2) the number of sound sources present in the soundscape, and (3) the presence of individual sound source, on noise annoyance perception. For this purpose, a large-scale online experiment was carried out with 1.2k+ participants, using 2.8k+ audio recordings of complex urban acoustic environments to investigate how they would influence the perceived noise annoyance. Results showed that: (1) the combinations of different sound sources were not important, compared, instead, to the number of sound sources identified in the soundscape recording (regardless of sound sources type); (2) the annoyance ratings expressed a minimum when any two clearly distinguishable sound sources were present in a given urban soundscape; and (3) the presence (either in isolation or combination) of traffic-related sound sources increases noise annoyance, while the presence (either in isolation or combination) of nature-related sound sources decreases noise annoyance. Full article

Soundscape research has been gaining prominence in studies on the built environment. The soundscape concept is defined as the acoustic environment as perceived and/or understood by a person in context. Compared with traditional building acoustics, the soundscape concept brings interesting perspectives—but also challenges—for undergraduate architectural curricula, where it tries to strike a balance between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, a theoretical approach that in the context of soundscape studies it is often referred to as ‘triangulation’. Starting from real-world higher education courses, the aim of this paper is to examine how the soundscape approach can be integrated into teaching building acoustics at the undergraduate level in architectural courses. Methods such as soundwalks, acoustic measurements, and computational simulations that are commonly used in soundscape research are introduced in educational projects as tools for students to experience, analyse, and articulate the narrative around the sound environment to inform their design concepts and details. Full article

Soundscape assessments by citizens are starting to emerge as a common practice, normally carried out in context by means of soundwalks along selected paths with volunteers. However, when such assessments are carried out, either in situ or in laboratory experiments, visually impaired citizens are not usually involved. To address this question, three soundwalks were carried out in 2020 in the city of Granada, in southern Spain, with the participation of visually impaired people. In this paper, we present the lessons learnt from this research with respect to the methodology issues that have to do with soundwalking and the surveying procedures when people with limited vison are participating, the assessment results, and a comparison with a soundscape evaluation carried out in 2019 without the collaboration of visually impaired people. The results of this preliminary campaign highlight that: (1) Adapting soundscape assessment protocols from standards for visually impaired people is a methodological challenge that requires research attention; (2) Some of the different patterns in the assessment of the soundscape pleasantness between visually impaired and nonvisually impaired participants emerged; (3) The perception of quietness may differ for visually impaired people when orientation and identification are factors that play a role in the acoustic environment evaluation. Full article

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the lockdown events and policies that followed, led to significant changes in the built environment and how it is experienced by people and communities. Among those, variations in the acoustic environments were some of the most noticeable in cities. This study investigated the relationships between the perception of the acoustic environment (i.e., soundscape) and different personal factors such as attitudes towards the pandemic and noise sensitivity, by performing a survey with 109 participants in an urban green public space in Antwerp (Belgium), shortly after most restrictions issued by the government were lifted in September 2020 when the first contamination wave ended. While preliminary in nature, the results of this data collection campaign show that people actively changing their behaviors (using less public transport or cycling more) assessed the soundscapes as less vibrant/exciting. People who were more concerned about the pandemic tended to notice more natural sounds and noise from traffic on nearby local roads. This same subset also put a bigger importance on the environmental quality of the public space than in the pre-pandemic period. Noise sensitivity also played a role, as an association was found between more-than-average noise sensitive persons and those more worried regarding the pandemic. Overall, the findings of this study confirm that at least part of the people have started to perceive the public space, including its soundscape, differently since the start of the pandemic. Full article

Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional activities. It was organized simultaneously in Ghent, Montreal, Nantes, Zurich, London and Berlin by researchers at Ghent University, Mc Gill University, Université Gustave Eiffel, EMPA, University College London and TU Berlin. The online event created opportunities for interaction between participants at poster-booths, virtual coffee tables, and included social activities. Full article

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 $R^2=0.64$ 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

The deployment of measures to mitigate sound during propagation outdoors is most often a compromise between the acoustic design, practical limitations, and visual preferences regarding the landscape. The current study of a raised berm next to a highway shows a number of common issues like the impact of the limited length of the noise shielding device, initially non-dominant sounds becoming noticeable, local drops in efficiency when the barrier is not fully continuous, and overall limited abatement efficiencies. Detailed assessments of both the objective and subjective effect of the intervention, both before and after the intervention was deployed, using the same methodology, showed that especially the more noise sensitive persons benefit from the noise abatement. Reducing the highest exposure levels did not result anymore in a different perception compared to more noise insensitive persons. People do react to spatial variation in exposure and abatement efficiency. Although level reductions might not be excessive in many real-life complex multi-source situations, they do improve the perception of the acoustic environment in the public space. Full article

Sound environments in large public buildings are likely to be different from those of performance spaces, as well as those not specifically designed for acoustic “performance”, but where sounds still play an important role because of the function they can promote (or disrupt). The aim of this study was identifying common strategies and empirical approaches researchers have been implementing for these acoustically complex enclosures and to provide some methodological indications for future studies on the topic. Studies conducted in three building types for crowd transit, such as museums/exhibition spaces, shopping malls, and transportation hubs/stations, which were collecting data about either physical outcomes or individual responses for such sound environments, were selected. The Scopus databases were searched for peer-reviewed journal papers published in English without time limitations. An additional manual search was performed on the reference lists of the retrieved items. The general consideration on inclusion was to meet the requirement that the case belonged to the three building types, and then the specific inclusion criteria were: (1) including at least an objective acoustic measure of the space; or (2) including at least a subjective measure of the space. The search returned 1060 results; after removing duplicates, two authors screened titles and abstracts and selected 117 papers for further analysis. Twenty-six studies were eventually included. Due to the limited number of items and differences in measures across studies, a quantitative meta-analysis could not be performed, and a qualitative approach was adopted instead. The most commonly used objective measures were SPL, and more specifically often considered as L_Aeq, and T. The intervals across studies were currently of inconsistency, and the selection is recommended to take space scale factor into account. The used subjective measures can be classified into four categories as annoyance, affective quality, room-acoustic quality, and acoustic spatiality. Four basic perceptual assessments concerning dynamic contents are accordingly suggested as “annoying-not annoying”, “crowded-uncrowded”, “long-short (reverberation)”, and “far away-nearby”. The other descriptors can be project-specific. The methodologies involve measurement, questionnaire/interview, listening test, and software simulation. It is necessary for the former two to consider temporal and spatial features of such spaces, and the adoption of the latter two will lead to better understanding of users’ exposure in such spaces, e.g., acoustic sequences and user amount. The outputs of investigations inform that background noise level, e.g., 90 dB in museum/exhibition spaces, and sound reverberation, e.g., 4.0 to 5.0 s in shopping malls and transportation hubs/station, are of fundamental importance to the design of such spaces. Sufficient acoustic comfort can be achieved with integrated design of indoor soundscape. Full article

Hospitals are controlled yet complex ecosystems which provide a therapeutic environment that promotes healing, wellbeing and work efficiency for patients and staff. As these buildings accommodate the sick and vulnerable, occupant wellbeing and good indoor environmental quality (IEQ) that deals with indoor air quality (IAQ), thermal comfort, lighting and acoustics are important objectives. As the specialist nature of hospital function demands highly controlled indoor environments, this makes them energy intensive buildings due to the complex and varying specifications for their functions and operations. This paper reports on a holistic building performance evaluation covering aspects of indoor air quality, thermal comfort, lighting, acoustics, and energy use. It assesses the performance issues and inter-relationships between IEQ and energy in a new building on a hospital campus in the city of Bristol, United Kingdom. The empirical evidence collated from this case study and the feedback received from the hospital staff help identify the endemic issues and constraints related to hospital buildings, such as the need for robust ventilation strategies in hospitals in urban areas that mitigate the effect of indoor and outdoor air pollution and ensuring the use of planned new low-carbon technologies. Whilst the existing guidelines for building design provide useful instructions for the protection of hospital buildings against ingress of particulate matter from outdoors, more advanced filtration strategies may be required to enact chemical reactions required to control the concentration levels of pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide and benzene. Further lessons for improved performance in operation and maintenance of hospitals are highlighted. These include ensuring that the increasingly available metering and monitoring data in new buildings, through building management systems, is used for efficient and optimal building operations for better IEQ and energy management. Overall, the study highlights the need for an integrated and holistic approach to building performance to ensure that healthy environments are provided while energy efficiency targets are met. Full article

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is a simulated technology used to deliver multisensory information to people under different environmental conditions. When IVR is generally applied in urban planning and soundscape research, it reveals attractive possibilities for the assessment of urban sound environments with higher immersion for human participation. In virtual sound environments, various topics and measures are designed to collect subjective responses from participants under simulated laboratory conditions. Soundscape or noise assessment studies during virtual experiences adopt an evaluation approach similar to in situ methods. This paper aims to review the approaches that are utilized to assess the ecological validity of IVR for the perception of urban sound environments and the necessary technologies during audio–visual reproduction to establish a dynamic IVR experience that ensures ecological validity. The review shows that, through the use of laboratory tests including subjective response surveys, cognitive performance tests and physiological responses, the ecological validity of IVR can be assessed for the perception of urban sound environments. The reproduction system with head-tracking functions synchronizing spatial audio and visual stimuli (e.g., head-mounted displays (HMDs) with first-order Ambisonics (FOA)-tracked binaural playback) represents the prevailing trend to achieve high ecological validity. These studies potentially contribute to the outcomes of a normalized evaluation framework for subjective soundscape and noise assessments in virtual environments. Full article