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Following the successful first Urban Sound Symposium held at Ghent University in 2019, the second edition in 2021 had to face the challenges of the pandemic. The symposium turned this challenge into an opportunity for giving easier access to practitioners and experts from around the globe who are confronted with urban sound in their professional activities. It was organized simultaneously in Ghent, Montreal, Nantes, Zurich, London and Berlin by researchers at Ghent University, Mc Gill University, Université Gustave Eiffel, EMPA, University College London and TU Berlin. The online event created opportunities for interaction between participants at poster-booths, virtual coffee tables, and included social activities.
Dick Botteldooren; Timothy Van Renterghem; Catherine Guastavino; Arnaud Can; André Fiebig; Jean-Marc Wunderli; Jian Kang; Francesco Aletta. Abstracts of the Second Urban Sound Symposium. Proceedings 2021, 72, 4 .
AMA StyleDick Botteldooren, Timothy Van Renterghem, Catherine Guastavino, Arnaud Can, André Fiebig, Jean-Marc Wunderli, Jian Kang, Francesco Aletta. Abstracts of the Second Urban Sound Symposium. Proceedings. 2021; 72 (1):4.
Chicago/Turabian StyleDick Botteldooren; Timothy Van Renterghem; Catherine Guastavino; Arnaud Can; André Fiebig; Jean-Marc Wunderli; Jian Kang; Francesco Aletta. 2021. "Abstracts of the Second Urban Sound Symposium." Proceedings 72, no. 1: 4.
The deployment of measures to mitigate sound during propagation outdoors is most often a compromise between the acoustic design, practical limitations, and visual preferences regarding the landscape. The current study of a raised berm next to a highway shows a number of common issues like the impact of the limited length of the noise shielding device, initially non-dominant sounds becoming noticeable, local drops in efficiency when the barrier is not fully continuous, and overall limited abatement efficiencies. Detailed assessments of both the objective and subjective effect of the intervention, both before and after the intervention was deployed, using the same methodology, showed that especially the more noise sensitive persons benefit from the noise abatement. Reducing the highest exposure levels did not result anymore in a different perception compared to more noise insensitive persons. People do react to spatial variation in exposure and abatement efficiency. Although level reductions might not be excessive in many real-life complex multi-source situations, they do improve the perception of the acoustic environment in the public space.
Timothy Van Renterghem; Francesco Aletta; Dick Botteldooren. Changes in the Soundscape of the Public Space Close to a Highway by a Noise Control Intervention. Sustainability 2021, 13, 5284 .
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem, Francesco Aletta, Dick Botteldooren. Changes in the Soundscape of the Public Space Close to a Highway by a Noise Control Intervention. Sustainability. 2021; 13 (9):5284.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem; Francesco Aletta; Dick Botteldooren. 2021. "Changes in the Soundscape of the Public Space Close to a Highway by a Noise Control Intervention." Sustainability 13, no. 9: 5284.
Due to its local character, there is a tight link between the environmental noise issue and urban planning. Although the need for sound planning has been advocated since decades, limited information can be found on what this now means in practice. In this work, a methodology to internalize sound in the urban planning process is presented, applied to a major redevelopment project of a city ring road. The specific interest in increasing green infrastructure, and at the same time, tackling environmental noise, makes this project timely and challenging. Noise experts took part in an intense co-creation process with the spatial planning teams, where also dwellers were involved. Interactions ranged from conveying general information on environmental noise, providing solutions tailored to the local setting, qualitative expert opinions on initial plans, and assessing the applicability of uncommon noise abatements with numerical tools. The latter is important as the noise reduction potential of such measures could strongly influence the next round of spatial planning. Each planning phase should be optimized to allow maximum freedom in the next iterations. While evaluating various planning scenarios, separate acoustic goals were set for the sound exposure at dwellings, in the public space and along soft connections.
Timothy Van Renterghem; Luc Dekoninck; Dick Botteldooren. Multi-stage sound planning methodology for urban redevelopment. Sustainable Cities and Society 2020, 62, 102362 .
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem, Luc Dekoninck, Dick Botteldooren. Multi-stage sound planning methodology for urban redevelopment. Sustainable Cities and Society. 2020; 62 ():102362.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem; Luc Dekoninck; Dick Botteldooren. 2020. "Multi-stage sound planning methodology for urban redevelopment." Sustainable Cities and Society 62, no. : 102362.
Inappropriate sound environments are able to strongly deteriorate the user experience in parks. A possible remediation is adding positively perceived sounds. The case of an urban park, fully surrounded by busy roads, was studied to explore the potential of adding natural sounds in an interactive way. With a smartphone app, recruited users (N = 165) were allowed to mix in a combination of eight types of natural sounds, played back by a hidden loudspeaker, until their personally optimized soundscape was composed. These preferred soundscapes were then evaluated by other participants. A questionnaire showed that these compositions are able to improve the general appreciation of the auditive environment, especially for park visitors that rated the reference situation as poor. Road traffic noise, the dominant sound source in the park under study, was heard to a much lesser extent, showing the masking potential of the augmented natural soundscapes. Most people prefer a balanced combination of various types of (natural) sounds, in which songbirds and house sparrows were prominent. There was consistency among the participants to optimize the signal-to-noise ratio of the added natural sounds in the frequency range between 2.5 kHz and 8 kHz. So without the common and most often visually intruding noise abatements solutions, interactively augmented soundscapes can improve the sonic environment in noise polluted parks. More in general, the current ICT-based approach can be considered as an efficient methodology to improve the perception of urban public spaces.
Timothy Van Renterghem; Kris Vanhecke; Karlo Filipan; Kang Sun; Toon De Pessemier; Bert De Coensel; Wout Joseph; Dick Botteldooren. Interactive soundscape augmentation by natural sounds in a noise polluted urban park. Landscape and Urban Planning 2019, 194, 103705 .
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem, Kris Vanhecke, Karlo Filipan, Kang Sun, Toon De Pessemier, Bert De Coensel, Wout Joseph, Dick Botteldooren. Interactive soundscape augmentation by natural sounds in a noise polluted urban park. Landscape and Urban Planning. 2019; 194 ():103705.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem; Kris Vanhecke; Karlo Filipan; Kang Sun; Toon De Pessemier; Bert De Coensel; Wout Joseph; Dick Botteldooren. 2019. "Interactive soundscape augmentation by natural sounds in a noise polluted urban park." Landscape and Urban Planning 194, no. : 103705.
Timothy Van Renterghem. Towards explaining the positive effect of vegetation on the perception of environmental noise. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 2019, 40, 133 -144.
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. Towards explaining the positive effect of vegetation on the perception of environmental noise. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. 2019; 40 ():133-144.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. 2019. "Towards explaining the positive effect of vegetation on the perception of environmental noise." Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 40, no. : 133-144.
Gabions – metal-wired cages filled up with stones – are increasingly becoming popular as decorative elements and land property boundaries. It has been shown before that such structures can be used as road traffic noise barriers as well. However, the types of stones used in gabions have not been experimentally studied so far. Exploratory measurements at full scale in a semi-anechoic room were performed to study the effect of both porous and rigid stones on their noise reducing potential. At the 1/3 octave bands below 1 kHz, low-height gabions (with depths of 20 cm and 30 cm) hardly provide any sound pressure level reduction. At higher sound frequencies, in contrast, the shielding rapidly increases. Porous lava stones were found to significantly increase the shielding compared to rigid stones. Reflections on such non-deep low-height barriers towards the source side were found to be of minor importance when considering a standardized A-weighted road traffic noise spectrum.
Timothy Van Renterghem; Ine Van Ginderachter; Pieter Thomas. Porous stones increase the noise shielding of a gabion. Applied Acoustics 2018, 145, 82 -88.
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem, Ine Van Ginderachter, Pieter Thomas. Porous stones increase the noise shielding of a gabion. Applied Acoustics. 2018; 145 ():82-88.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem; Ine Van Ginderachter; Pieter Thomas. 2018. "Porous stones increase the noise shielding of a gabion." Applied Acoustics 145, no. : 82-88.
Deliberately changing terrain undulation and ground characteristics (“acoustical landscaping”) is an potential noise abatement solution near roads. However, there is hardly any research regarding the validity of sound propagation models to predict its effectiveness. Long-term continuous sound pressure level measurements near a complex road traffic and sound propagation case were performed. Three types of modeling approaches were validated, covering the full spectrum of available techniques. A two-dimensional full-wave technique (the finite-difference time-domain method, FDTD), but also an advanced engineering model (the Harmonoise point-to-point model), provide accurate transmission loss predictions, both in 1/3 octave bands and for total A-weighted sound pressure levels. Two common and widely used semi-empirical engineering methods (ISO9613-2 and CNOSSOS) yield rather inaccurate results, notwithstanding the short propagation distance. The sensitivity to input data was assessed by modelling various scenarios with the FDTD method. Detailed ground effect modelling was shown to be of main importance.
Timothy Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. Landscaping for road traffic noise abatement: Model validation. Environmental Modelling & Software 2018, 109, 17 -31.
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem, Dick Botteldooren. Landscaping for road traffic noise abatement: Model validation. Environmental Modelling & Software. 2018; 109 ():17-31.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. 2018. "Landscaping for road traffic noise abatement: Model validation." Environmental Modelling & Software 109, no. : 17-31.
The specific noise immission from an (industrial) noise source is commonly assessed by short-term measurements. Good practice prescribes measuring under downwind conditions at modest wind speeds. Nevertheless, this still leads to large variation, even at short distances and needs quantification. More specifically, the variation in sound propagation due to the changing refractive state of the atmosphere and the relatively large variation in soil impedance one can find for (visually determined) “grassland” is studied. Highly detailed meteorological tower data were combined with measured grassland impedances. These data are fed to the full-wave one-directional Green's function parabolic equation sound propagation model. The variation, even under these good-practice measurement conditions, is found to be large, and strongly dependent on sound frequency, source height, receiver height, and propagation distance. When assessing the specific sound pressure level from a multitude of sources, this variation strongly decreases compared to a low-height single source. Besides absolute variations, fluctuations in the transmission loss between a close point and a more distant one are discussed in this paper. The variation ranges give an idea on this systematic uncertainty when performing short-term measurements, and their impact on convergence to yearly averaged equivalent sound pressure levels.
T. Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. Variability due to short-distance favorable sound propagation and its consequences for immission assessment. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2018, 143, 3406 -3417.
AMA StyleT. Van Renterghem, Dick Botteldooren. Variability due to short-distance favorable sound propagation and its consequences for immission assessment. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2018; 143 (6):3406-3417.
Chicago/Turabian StyleT. Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. 2018. "Variability due to short-distance favorable sound propagation and its consequences for immission assessment." The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 143, no. 6: 3406-3417.
In contemporary urban design, green public areas play a vital role. They have great societal value, but if exposed to undue environmental noise their restorative potential might be compromised. On the other hand, research has shown that the presence of greenery can moderate noise annoyance in areas with high sound levels, while personal factors are expected to play an important role too. A cycling path bordered by vegetation, but highly exposed to road traffic noise, was here considered as a case study. A sound perception survey was submitted to participants on site and they were subsequently sorted into groups according to their noise sensitivity, visual attention and attitude towards greenery. The aim of this study was testing whether these three personal factors could affect their noise perception and overall experience of the place. Results showed that people highly sensitive to noise and more sceptical towards greenery’s potential as an environmental moderator reported worse soundscape quality, while visually attentive people reported better quality. These three personal factors were found to be statistically independent. This study shows that several person-related factors impact the assessment of the sound environment in green areas. Although the majority of the respondents benefit from the presence of visual green, policy-makers and planners should be aware that for a significant subset of the population, it should be accompanied by a tranquil soundscape to be fully appreciated.
Francesco Aletta; Timothy Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. Influence of Personal Factors on Sound Perception and Overall Experience in Urban Green Areas. A Case Study of a Cycling Path Highly Exposed to Road Traffic Noise. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2018, 15, 1118 .
AMA StyleFrancesco Aletta, Timothy Van Renterghem, Dick Botteldooren. Influence of Personal Factors on Sound Perception and Overall Experience in Urban Green Areas. A Case Study of a Cycling Path Highly Exposed to Road Traffic Noise. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2018; 15 (6):1118.
Chicago/Turabian StyleFrancesco Aletta; Timothy Van Renterghem; Dick Botteldooren. 2018. "Influence of Personal Factors on Sound Perception and Overall Experience in Urban Green Areas. A Case Study of a Cycling Path Highly Exposed to Road Traffic Noise." International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 15, no. 6: 1118.
The urban fabric largely consists of acoustically rigid materials. This not only affects sound pressure levels in streets, but also how sound propagates towards the back side of a building or to connected urban canyons. A green roof is a practical solution to have roof absorption, mitigating diffracting sound waves. Flat green roofs were shown to provide roughly 3 dBA urban road traffic noise reduction relative to a common flat rigid roof. Although already relevant, it has been numerically studied in this work how the green roof insertion loss of flat roofs can be further increased. Solar panels on green roofs were found to significantly decrease sound pressure levels at the shielded building facade, up to 5 dBA on top of the insertion loss of granular substrates. Polyurethane foam slabs as green roof substrates provide relevant shielding when placed on a series of hollow trapezium-like cores of sufficient height.
Timothy Van Renterghem. Improving the noise reduction by green roofs due to solar panels and substrate shaping. Building Acoustics 2018, 25, 219 -232.
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. Improving the noise reduction by green roofs due to solar panels and substrate shaping. Building Acoustics. 2018; 25 (3):219-232.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. 2018. "Improving the noise reduction by green roofs due to solar panels and substrate shaping." Building Acoustics 25, no. 3: 219-232.
Sound propagation outdoors can be strongly affected by ground topography. The existence of hills and valleys between a source and receiver can lead to the shielding or focusing of sound waves. Such effects can result in significant variations in received sound levels. In addition, wind speed and air temperature gradients in the atmospheric boundary layer also play an important role. All of the foregoing factors can become especially important for the case of wind turbines located on a ridge overlooking a valley. Ridges are often selected for wind turbines in order to increase their energy capture potential through the wind speed-up effects often experienced in such locations. In this paper, a hybrid calculation method is presented to model such a case, relying on an analytical solution for sound diffraction around an impedance cylinder and the conformal mapping (CM) Green's function parabolic equation (GFPE) technique. The various aspects of the model have been successfully validated against alternative prediction methods. Example calculations with this hybrid analytical–CM–GFPE model show the complex sound pressure level distribution across the valley and the effect of valley ground type. The proposed method has the potential to include the effect of refraction through the inclusion of complex wind and temperature fields, although this aspect has been highly simplified in the current simulations.
Timothy Van Renterghem. Sound propagation from a ridge wind turbine across a valley. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 2017, 375, 20160105 .
AMA StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. Sound propagation from a ridge wind turbine across a valley. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 2017; 375 (2091):20160105.
Chicago/Turabian StyleTimothy Van Renterghem. 2017. "Sound propagation from a ridge wind turbine across a valley." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 375, no. 2091: 20160105.
Ultrafine particles (UFP, diameter < 100 nm) are very likely to negatively affect human health, as underlined by some epidemiological studies. Unfortunately, further investigation and monitoring are hindered by the high cost involved in measuring these UFP. Therefore we investigated the possibility to correlate UFP counts with data coming from low-cost sensors, most notably noise sensors. Analyses are based on an experiment where UFP counts, noise levels, traffic counts, nitrogen oxide (NO, NO2 and their combination NOx) concentrations, and meteorological data were collected simultaneously in a street canyon with a traffic intensity of 3200 vehicles/day, over a 3-week period during summer. Previous reports that NOx concentrations could be used as a proxy to UFP monitoring were verified in our setup. Traffic intensity or noise level data were found to correlate with UFP to a lesser degree than NOx did. This can be explained by the important influence of meteorological conditions (mainly wind and humidity), influencing UFP dynamics. Although correlations remain moderate, sound levels are more correlated to UFP in the 20–30 nm range. The particles in this size range have indeed rather short atmospheric residence times, and are thus more closely short-term traffic-related. Finally, the UFP estimates were significantly improved by grouping data with similar relative humidity and wind conditions. By doing this, we were able to devise noise indicators that correlate moderately with total particle counts, reaching a Spearman correlation of R = 0.62. Prediction with noise indicators is even comparable to the more-expensive-to-measure NOx for the smallest UFP, showing the potential of using microphones to estimate UFP counts.
Arnaud Can; M. Rademaker; T. Van Renterghem; V. Mishra; M. Van Poppel; Abdellah Touhafi; Jan Theunis; Bernard De Baets; Dick Botteldooren. Correlation analysis of noise and ultrafine particle counts in a street canyon. Science of The Total Environment 2011, 409, 564 -572.
AMA StyleArnaud Can, M. Rademaker, T. Van Renterghem, V. Mishra, M. Van Poppel, Abdellah Touhafi, Jan Theunis, Bernard De Baets, Dick Botteldooren. Correlation analysis of noise and ultrafine particle counts in a street canyon. Science of The Total Environment. 2011; 409 (3):564-572.
Chicago/Turabian StyleArnaud Can; M. Rademaker; T. Van Renterghem; V. Mishra; M. Van Poppel; Abdellah Touhafi; Jan Theunis; Bernard De Baets; Dick Botteldooren. 2011. "Correlation analysis of noise and ultrafine particle counts in a street canyon." Science of The Total Environment 409, no. 3: 564-572.