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Most research on sleep awakenings caused by aircraft noise determines the percent of awakenings from an average person's exposure to single aircraft events. Such research estimates the percent of people who would likely be awakened by a single aircraft of a given sound level, if everyone had average sensitivity to sleep awakening. However, such results do not show what percent of a composite population (of all sensitivities) would likely be awakened by a full night of aircraft events, of varying sound levels. It is this latter type of disturbance that provides a useful answer to the common question: How will altered nighttime aircraft operations affect awakenings in the communities surrounding an airport? This paper describes an alternative method for analyzing available sleep-awakening data to provide an answer to this question. The method is determined with one set of sleep-disturbance data, to yield dose-response relationships that may be applied to actual airport operations. The relationships are then validated by applying them to independent sleepawakening data, to predict the occurrence of sleep awakening in that data set. Predicted sleep awakening (and its predicted uncertainty) matched the independent data well. © 2007 Institute of Noise Control Engineering.

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This paper offers a new approach to understanding, improving and designing soundscapes. "Soundscape" means all the sounds that can be heard in a specific location. Soundscapes can be understood only through peoples' perceptions, and this paper proposes using those perceptions to link soundscape improvement and design with traditional noise control methods. Decades of experience have yielded in-depth understanding of how undesirable sounds may be controlled or reduced. The control methods, however, are generally applicable to single sources of sound while soundscapes are composed of multiple sounds. Using human judgments, first in the laboratory and later in the field, it will be possible to deconstruct any soundscape into its desirable and undesirable sounds, which may then, one-by-one, be subjected to proven methods of noise control. This approach includes complications, not the least of which is deciding how much the undesirable sounds should be reduced to perceptually improve the soundscape. Previous published studies, primarily laboratory, but also field studies, suggest that initial laboratory work followed by increasingly complex field applications, should result in an understanding of how soundscapes can be improved and desirable ones designed.Keywords: soundscape; noise; acoustical design; urban design Sustainability and the Role of SoundscapesSustainability in planning and design implies spaces that are planned, designed and managed to achieve the "triple bottom line" of being economical, environmentally friendly and improving the quality of life. The quality of life dimension addressed here is the sound environment (soundscape) which we experience in those spaces. Most places that we live, work, play and move through are OPEN ACCESS