sonic.shift
The Impact of Sustainable Urban Development Measures on the Acoustic Environment.
sonic.shift is a collaborative project between InUPH and the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Technical Acoustics at TU Berlin. It is the follow-up project to the SALVE+ project.
Sustainability will require a massive densification of cities in the future, which is hardly conceivable without an increase in sound — mostly in the form of noise. To achieve acceptance for future densification, high-quality, acoustically pleasant urban spaces are necessary. In this context, the assessment of complex sound events and their impact on human health is indispensable for the development of high-quality acoustic urban spaces.
For the upcoming transformation of cities into sustainable and health-promoting places, the design of such high-quality acoustic spaces will play a crucial role in fostering acceptance of densified urban areas. To gain new insights into the effects of sustainable urban development measures on the acoustic environment, various sustainable urban development projects in the Ruhr region will be monitored using longitudinal, high-temporal-resolution audio recordings. Additionally, comparative recordings are planned at selected locations in the Berlin area to investigate the transferability of the results from the Ruhr region to other locations.
Building on the results of our previous projects and work, we use a set of (psycho-)acoustic indices that (i) have already proven effective in describing the temporal and spatial dynamics of the urban acoustic environment and (ii) allow for a substantive discussion of the underlying causes of potential changes in the acoustic environment resulting from urban development processes. This marks the first steps toward a systematic assessment of urban planning processes with regard to their impact on the acoustic environment, with the aim of deriving measures that go beyond conventional noise reduction approaches and view the acoustic environment as a resource.
Contact InUPH
Dr. rer. medic.
Timo Haselhoff
Researcher