Perceiving Urban Soundscapes: Marc Ciufo Green Human and Machine - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Audio Lab - Department of Electronic Engineering Perceiving Urban Soundscapes: Marc Ciufo Green Human and Machine Perspectives Key Points What is a soundscape? Human impact on the soundscapes of our lives How to measure and quantify
Audio Lab - Department of Electronic Engineering
Marc Ciufo Green
❖ What is a soundscape? ❖ Human impact on the soundscapes of our lives ❖ How to measure and quantify environmental sound ❖ Human reactions to soundscapes ❖ My project - spatial soundscape analysis
“The age of humans”
[2]
❖ Immediate health effects: ❖ Hearing damage ❖ Lack of sleep ❖ Physical and emotional
wellbeing
❖ More difficult to quantify ❖ Limited historical surveys
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Building_site_-_panoramio.jpg
[3]
Sound Pressure Level A-weighted Equivalent
❖ Simple to measure and understand. ❖ Aggregates all sound into one figure. ❖ Content of the soundscape is discarded. ❖ Soundscape content is key to human
perception and reaction.
Environmental Noise Approach Soundscape Approach Sound managed as a waste Sound perceived as a resource Focus is on sounds of discomfort Focus is on sounds of preference Measured using LAeq Requires differentiation between sound sources and human judgement Managed by reducing levels Works towards wanted sounds not being masked by unwanted sounds
[5]
❖ Schafer’s Features of the Soundscape ❖ Soundecology Categories ❖ Brown’s Acoustic Environment Schema
Keynotes Signals Soundmarks Archetypal Sounds
Keynotes Signals Soundmarks Archetypal Sounds
Anthrophony Biophony Geophony
❖ NDSI - metric to measure biophony/anthrophony ratio ❖ Recently applied to urban sound by Devos
Anthrophony
+1
Biophony
Anthrophony
+1
Biophony
‘Computational model of auditory attention’ could improve results
❖ Anthro/Bio/Geophony given equal weight in
❖ Urban soundscapes dominated by Anthrophony ❖ ‘Insufficient resolution’ in urban sound
Sounds generated by human activity/facility Sounds not generated by human activity Voice & instrument Social/communal voice Non-amplified Amplified4 Motorised transport air traffic rail traffic roadway traffic marine traffic Electro- mechanical:
footsteps electrical installation non-motorized Human movement construction ventilation agriculture domestic recreation Other human6 wildlife earth/ice movement thunder water wind music speech singing laughter Nature3 Domesticated animals3 industry bells clock chimes fireworks azan alarms
Anthrophonic
Geophonic
Biophonic
[7]
Indoor Acoustic Environment The Acoustic Environment Outdoor Acoustic Environment
ditto Wilderness2 Acoustic Environment Urban1 Acoustic Environment Rural1 Acoustic Environment Underwater Acoustic Environment ditto ditto5 ditto Sounds generated by human activity/facility Sounds not generated by human activity Voice & instrument Social/communal voice Non-amplified Amplified4 Motorised transport air traffic rail traffic roadway traffic marine traffic Electro- mechanical:
footsteps electrical installation non-motorized Human movement construction ventilation agriculture domestic recreation Other human6 wildlife earth/ice movement thunder water wind music speech singing laughter Nature3 Domesticated animals3 industry bells clock chimes fireworks azan alarms
Anthrophonic
Geophonic
Biophonic
❖ Decouple sounds from human
‘value judgements’
❖ Objectivity in analysis - the
machine perspective
❖ Spatial soundscape recordings ❖ mh Acoustics EigenMike ❖ Samsung Gear 360 Camera ❖ 8 x 8 location categories ❖ 64 ten-minute recordings
[1] International Panel on Climate Change, “Climate Change 2013 - Summary for Policymakers” 2013. [Online]. Available: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf [Accessed: 6th June 2017] [2] C. N. Waters et al., “The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene,” Science, vol. 351, no. 6269, p. aad2622, Jan 2016. [3] R.M. Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions / Bear & Co, 1993. [4] S. Harriet and D. Murphy, “Auralisation of an urban soundscape,” Acta Acustica united with Acustica, vol. 101, no. 4, pp. 798-810, Jul 2015. [5] A. L. Brown, “Soundscapes and environmental noise management,” Noise Control Engineering Journal, vol. 58, no. 5, pp. 493 - 500, 2010. [6] J. Kang and B. Schulte-Fortkamp, Soundscapes and the Built Environment. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2016. [7] A. Brown, J. Kang and T. Gjestland, “Towards standardisation in soundscape preference assessment,” Applied Acoustics, vol. 72, no. 6, pp. 387-392, May 2011. [8] Ö. Axelsson, M. E. Nilsson and B. Berglung, “A principle components model of soundscape perception,” The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 128, no. 5, pp. 2836-2846, Nov 2010.