Multilevel Annoyance Modelling of Short Environmental Sound Recordings

Ferran Orga, Andrew Mitchell, Marc Freixes, Francesco Aletta, Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès and Maria Foraster
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Ferran Orga: Grup de recerca en Tecnologies Mèdia, La Salle—URL, Quatre Camins, 30, 08022 Barcelona, Spain
Andrew Mitchell: Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett, University College London (UCL), Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN, UK
Marc Freixes: Grup de recerca en Tecnologies Mèdia, La Salle—URL, Quatre Camins, 30, 08022 Barcelona, Spain
Francesco Aletta: Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, The Bartlett, University College London (UCL), Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H 0NN, UK
Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès: Grup de recerca en Tecnologies Mèdia, La Salle—URL, Quatre Camins, 30, 08022 Barcelona, Spain
Maria Foraster: ISGlobal, Parc de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona (PRBB), Doctor Aiguader, 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: noise; annoyance evaluation; citizen; perceptive test; smart-city; annoyance modelling; wireless acoustic sensor network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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