An approach on the evaluation of urban acoustical comfort with the soundscape concept

Cities should be conveniently designed, shaped and/or restructured to achieve various comfort conditions with an integrated approach for citizens. Urban acoustical comfort is one of the most important items of ongoing researches on this aspect.Equivalent continuous sound level (LAeq) is the basic noise indicator utilized to evaluate urban acoustical comfort. On the other hand, various researches showed that this indicator is insufficient to define the sound environment, to evaluate the environmental noise annoyance and the acoustical environment quality.Soundscape is a relatively new concept that defines the acoustical environment depending on the interaction among multiple sound sources and environmental parameters. Soundscape concept treats the sound environment as a multi-dimensional entity, based on the complex interaction between sound source, physical environment and human being.Researches published on soundscape display a great variety of aim, area, evaluation criteria, therefore methodologies. On the other hand the review of the related literature shows that there is not a common reconciliation about the properties of the subjective and objective data, the methods of data collection and evaluation, and the statistical methods to be used in the correlation. Therefore, a wide-frame study aiming to develop an approach based on soundscape for the evaluation, conservation and rehabilitation of acoustical comfort in urban areas, is planned and realised. The hypothesis of the study is `soundscape quality can objectively be evaluated through the perceptibility of soundmark?.Objective and subjective assessments of the sound environment in urban spaces form the conceptual frame of the study. In this structure, the results of semantic evaluation derived from the area, are correlated with the objective evaluation of the soundscape. Depending on this, the method investigating the accuracy of the hypothesis, is developed depending on the field application. Accordingly, the study is realised with the chapters listed below;The first chapter presents the review of the related literature, the aim, scope, hypothesis and utilities of the study.In the second chapter information on noise, noise units and indicators, evaluation methodologies of environmental noise and urban acoustical comfort, definition of soundscape and its components as well as the literature review on soundscape are given.The third chapter deals with the conceptual model and application method of the study.The fourth chapter explains the study on an approach proposal developed on a field application by the steps of; deriving the objective and subjective evaluations of the sound environment via the field and the laboratory studies, statistically analysing the data (individually and comparatively), correlating the results and developing a draft of the approach proposal.The fifth chapter states the approach proposal with the revised/last version after theoretically testing the draft by using the first fields which are studied before and then practically testing it by using new fields.The sixth chapter discusses the results and describes future suggestions.In this thesis, all data derived from the field and laboratory studies are utilized for testing the hypothesis and a relevant approach proposal is developed by the evaluations and interpretations of the data, accordingly the accuracy of the hypothesis is revealed. It is also documented that there is a direct relationship between the satisfaction from soundmark and the sound environment. The approach proposal aiming to contribute to the evaluation, conservation and rehabilitation of urban acoustical comfort, provides an innovative perspective in terms of interactive communication between international and national action plans and citizens. The qualitative interpretations about the sound environment can be obtained from the quantitative data derived from the field study by using the proposal, via the qualitative analysis in the laboratory and the listed equations for pairs of adjectives which can be described by the sound quality metrics.