A Taxonomy Proposal for the Assessment of the Changes in Soundscape Resulting from the COVID-19 Lockdown

César Asensio, Pierre Aumond, Arnaud Can, Luis Gascó, Peter Lercher, Jean-Marc Wunderli, Catherine Lavandier, Guillermo de Arcas, Carlos Ribeiro, Patricio Muñoz and Gaetano Licitra
Additional contact information
César Asensio: Instrumentation and Applied Acoustics Research group (I2A2), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain
Pierre Aumond: UMRAE, Univ Gustave Eiffel, IFSTTAR, CEREMA, 44340 Bouguenais, France
Arnaud Can: UMRAE, Univ Gustave Eiffel, IFSTTAR, CEREMA, 44340 Bouguenais, France
Luis Gascó: Instrumentation and Applied Acoustics Research group (I2A2), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain
Peter Lercher: Institute for Highway Engineering and Transport Planning, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria
Jean-Marc Wunderli: Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology, Laboratory for Acoustics/Noise Control, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
Catherine Lavandier: ETIS Laboratory, UMR 8051, CY Cergy Paris University, ENSEA, CNRS, F-95302 Cergy-Pontoise Cedex, France
Guillermo de Arcas: Instrumentation and Applied Acoustics Research group (I2A2), Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 28031 Madrid, Spain
Carlos Ribeiro: Bruitparif, 93200 Saint-Denis, France
Patricio Muñoz: Acoucite, Observatoire de l’environnement sonore de la Métropole de Lyon, 69007 Lyon, France
Gaetano Licitra: Environmental Protection Agency of Tuscany Region, Pisa Department, 56127 Pisa, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 12, 1-9

Abstract: Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to be carried out in a more harmonized and consistent manner, this paper makes a proposal for a set of indicators that will enable to address the challenge from a number of different approaches. It proposes a minimum set of basic energetic indicators, and the taxonomy that will allow their communication and reporting. In addition, an extended set of descriptors is outlined which better enables the application of more novel approaches to the evaluation of the effect of this new soundscape on people’s subjective perception.

Keywords: COVID-19; noise; soundscape; metrics; indicators; descriptors; sound; lockdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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