The temporal structure of urban soundscapes

Abstract

The influence of noise on the quality of the urban living environment has traditionally been studied focusing on negative effects on man, such as noise annoyance and sleep disturbance. Recently a more holistic approach, including positive and negative aspects as well as non-residential functions of the urban environment, has gained renewed interest. The label ''urban soundscape'' is often used to refer to this approach. Research towards quantification of the acoustic descriptors of the urban soundscape is, however, still in an early stage. This paper draws on the analogy with music to propose an indicator for studying the temporal structure of the urban soundscape. The link to self-organized criticality of the underlying system is drawn. The influence on the new indicator of road traffic noise, an important soundscape disturber in urban areas, is analyzed in detail. r

Sounds perceived as annoying by hearing-aid users in their daily soundscape

“…Moreover, it has been reported for normal-hearing persons that sound with music-like temporal structure can become annoying when intruding the living environment (Botteldooren et al, 2006). Even though it is probably true for hearing-impaired persons as well, we are not aware of any studies indicating if it is valid for persons with hearing impairment.…”

A framework for improving urban soundscapes

“…A soundscape is made up of multiple, often time-varying [12] sound sources, and is also affected by the relationships between those sound sources in time and space. Figure 1 presents this concept visually, where "Sound" represents traditional objective measures of the sound signal ( such as psychoacoustic metrics like loudness, sharpness etc) and "Scape" represents the concept that a soundscape is a dynamically changing entity, made up of various sound sources, the perception of which also depends upon the variety, mix, direction and interplay of these sources.…”

“…It is also important to consider the effect of temporal conditions [12], as perception of a soundscape may change over the course of a day, or over the course of a week or a year. Weekdays and weekends may produce very different soundscapes in the same space.…”

A road traffic noise pattern simulation model that includes distributions of vehicle sound power levels

“…These models predict the instantaneous contribution of single vehicles to the sound level at a receiver location over time, and account for dynamic effects of vehicular traffic, such as the excess noise emission due to acceleration of vehicles (although limitations still exist because of the relative scarcity of measurement data on emissions during acceleration, and because of the limited accuracy of the estimated traffic variables, in particular acceleration, within dynamic traffic models). This dynamic approach can be used to estimate more advanced indicators, such as indicators that assess the impact of traffic light cycles [26][27][28] or indicators that assess the temporal structure of the sound [29]. Clearly, this…”