1,721,020 research outputs found
On the relationship between land use and sound sources in the urban environment
No full textThe purpose of this case study was to explore the relationship between land use and sound sources and how to characterize urban environments in this respect. To this end, binaural recordings and 360° videos were used in a listening experiment, where 20 university students assessed the dominance of sound sources coupled with the appropriateness of land use variables and variables of social and recreational activities. Principal Components Analysis showed that the activity-based environment can be explained by two main components related to the degree of manmade features and the density of people. These components are closely associated with sounds
Characterisation of the soundscape in Valley Gardens, Brighton, by a soundwalk prior to an urban design intervention
No full textThe purpose of the present study was to characterize the soundscape of the Valley Gardens in Brighton before the area is converted into a downtown park. Valley Gardens is located in the busy city centre. It extends from the Brighton Pier at the seafront and approximately 1.5 km to the north. It includes Old Stein, Victoria Gardens, St Peter's Church, and The Level. In 2015 work will commence on redeveloping Victoria Gardens and St Peter's Church. In order to characterize the soundscape of the Valley Gardens prior to this urban design intervention a soundwalk was conducted. In October 2014, a group of 21 persons-experts in acoustics and officers of the City Council-were guided through the area together, and assessed the soundscape at eight sites: five within the Valley Gardens and three reference sites. The assessments covered the soundscape quality, how appropriate the soundscape is to the place, the dominance of perceived sound sources, and the affective quality of the soundscape. In addition, binaural recordings and sound-level measurements were conducted at each of the eight sites during the soundwalk. Preliminary results indicate that the Valley Gardens was dominated by the sound of road traffic, and that the soundscape was perceived as inappropriate to the place. Consequently, the planned design intervention should reduce the dominance of road-traffic sound and introduce more positive sounds, like the sound of people and nature. This would be done through careful planning of the landscape and human activities within the area. The plan is to follow-up these results with a post-intervention soundwalk
Soundscape Assessment
No full textThis eBook is a collection of articles from a Frontiers Research Topic. Frontiers Research Topics are very popular trademarks of the Frontiers Journals Series: they are collections of at least ten articles, all centered on a particular subject. With their unique mix of varied contributions from Original Research to Review Articles, Frontiers Research Topics unify the most influential researchers, the latest key findings and historical advances in a hot research area! Find out more on how to host your own Frontiers Research Topic or contribute to one as an author by contacting the Frontiers Editorial Office: frontiersin.org/about/contac
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Designing Soundscape for Sustainable Urban Development
No full textThe term 'soundscape' — the acoustic equivalent to 'landscape' — is relatively new to many. The present report summarises the results of the conference Designing Soundscape for Sustainable Urban Development, which was organised in order to introduce the soundscape approach to architects and urban planners who have little or no previous experience in this field. Like the conference, the present report seeks to inspire and provoke new thoughts in order to challenge the visual dominance in architecture. In order to reach this objective I invited among the finest soundscape experts in the world to present their thoughts and case studies for others to follow. By the present report they provide their contributions in written form for those who could not participate in the conference. I am convinced that these thoughts will change the way you perceive the built environment, as well as the way you think about and listen to sounds. The report makes evident that the soundscape is an essential environmental resource.</p
Towards guidelines for soundscape design
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Definite Space – Fuzzy Responsibility, Prague, 13-16th July, 2015Architects and urban planners request guidelines with regards to soundscape design. In 2013 staff and students at the University of Sheffield, UK, were invited to take part in an electronic survey to investigate what kinds of urban open spaces that they prefer, and how these spaces should be designed with regards to soundscape. Respondents were asked to freely name their favourite outdoor place in Sheffield, and to what extent they found a list of 45 social and recreational activities, as well as a list of 40 sound sources appropriate for this place. A total of 935 individuals completed the questionnaire. A hierarchical cluster analysis of the 45 social and recreational activities revealed three main categories of favourite outdoor places: ‘Urban Park’, ‘City Centre’, and ‘My Space’. For ‘Urban Park’ natural sounds were appropriate when clearly audible, sounds of individuals when moderately audible, sounds of crowds when slightly audible, and technological sounds when inaudible. For ‘City Centre’ sounds of individuals were appropriate when moderately audible, whereas natural sounds, and sounds of crowds were appropriate when slightly audible. Technological sounds were appropriate when inaudible. For ‘My Space’ natural sounds and sounds of individuals were appropriate when moderately audible, whereas sounds of crowds and technological sounds were appropriate when inaudible. This kinds of profiles may serve as design guidelines for urban outdoor spaces with regards to soundscape, based on their social and recreational purposes.Published Versio
Perceived quality of urban open space: a Stockholm case study
No full textBook of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Spaces of Dialog for Places of Dignity, Lisbon, 11-14th July, 2017In investigating the quality of urban open space, it is important to investigate how the visual and auditory components contribute to the total quality. The majority of studies investigating audio-visual interaction in environmental perception have concerned how visual stimuli affect auditory perception, such as how vegetation affects the perception of the sound of road traffic from a motorway (e.g., Anderson, Mulligan, Goodman, Regen, 1983). In general, these studies indicate that how people perceive sound depends on the visual context. That is, some sounds are more appropriate in one context than in another, which seems to depend on the participants’ expectations. For example, a city center is expected to sound like a city center, and not like a forest, and vice versa. Typically, a mismatch resulted in discomfort. A handful of laboratory studies investigated how perception of auditory and visual aspects related to the perception of the composite of audio-visual information (e.g., Gifford & Ng, 1982; Kuwano, Namba, Komatsu, Kato, & Hayashi, 2001; Morinaga, Aono, Kuwano, & Kato, 2003). Chiefly, these studies showed that visual aspects of environments were more important than auditory aspects. However, how important the visual aspects were, was highly variable across different environments. This indicates that auditory information might dominate over visual information at some point (see also Gan, Luo, Breitung, Kang, & Zhang, 2014; Preis, Kociński, Hafke-Dys, & Wrzosek, 2015).Published versio
How to measure soundscape quality
No full textThe Swedish Soundscape-Quality Protocol has been criticized for being insufficient, because it proposes to assess soundscape quality by a Good–Bad Scale, and alternatively by eight attribute scales assessing the perceived affective quality of a soundscape. Critics argue that further alternative definitions of ‘soundscape quality’ must be explored. In particular they argue for assessing ‘soundscape quality’ by asking to what extent a soundscape is appropriate to a place. The Sound Cities project at School of Architecture, University of Sheffield, in the UK, investigated this issue by a listening experiment involving 50 university students and 25 urban and peri-urban areas from the UK. The results indicate that the Good–Bad Scale is correlated with the perceived affective quality of a soundscape. Conversely, the appropriateness of a soundscape to a place is orthogonal to the former two assessments and provides additional information. Thus, a soundscape can be appropriate to a place even though it is poor. This raises the issue of which information should be given priority. Probably the best recommendation is to assess soundscape by perceived affective quality. In addition, it is possible to complement this assessment by assessing the appropriateness of the soundscape to the place. However, the latter assessment should not be used on its own, as this may lead to unfortunate conclusions.</p
- …
