Acoustic quality is one of the aspects that contribute to the heritage of cultural and religious spaces. It is increasingly common to find scientific literature detailing the sound characteristics of places of worship, especially those with cultural and historical interests. This article presents a comprehensive acoustic characterization of three colonial heritage churches in Quito. It examines the relationship between objective and subjective parameters that influence the valuation of a space or sound environment. To analyze this relationship, the study employs Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to evaluate three latent variables using perceptual acoustic indicators. Results from SEM showed statistically confirmed pathways between sociodemographic variables and latent perceptual constructs, which supports the notion that acoustic quality is not entirely captured by more classical measures of intelligibility or clarity.

Acoustic quality is one of the aspects that contribute to the heritage of cultural and religious spaces. It is increasingly common to find scientific literature detailing the sound characteristics of places of worship, especially those with cultural and historical significance. This article presents a comprehensive acoustic characterization of three colonial heritage churches in Quito. It examines the relationship between objective and subjective parameters that influence the valuation of a space or sound environment. To analyze this relationship, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate three latent variables using perceptual acoustic indicators. The SEM results highlighted significant associations between physical acoustic parameters, emotional responses, and evaluative judgments, underscoring that traditional intelligibility metrics alone may not fully capture acoustic quality in these contexts. These findings provide a robust interdisciplinary framework that spans objective measures and human perception, offering valuable guidance for future heritage conservation efforts.

Strategic noise maps represent a valuable tool for the characterisation of urban soundscapes, but their transformation into indicators related to the exposed population and health effects remains a matter of methodology, particularly in the absence of dwelling-level information. A workflow at the façade level for the estimation of population exposure to road-traffic noise and high sleep disturbance in six sampled sectors of Quito, Ecuador, is developed and tested. The workflow combines outputs from strategic noise maps, cadastral and land-use data, population of census sectors, receiver levels on façades, and three alternative methods of population assignment consistent with CNOSSOS-EU. Sectors were also classified by urban-methodological complexity to assess whether sensitivity of exposure estimates varies across urban fabrics. Results indicate that methodological uncertainty is strongly conditioned by urban configuration. Sensitivity was greatest in dense and morphologically complex sectors, where alternative population-assignment methods produced substantially different estimates of both exposure and high sleep disturbance. These findings suggest that urban form influences not only acoustic exposure itself, but also the reliability and interpretation of health-oriented noise indicators. At the aggregate level, estimated HSD varied from 283.8 under M2 to 718.5 under M1, a 2.5-fold difference. The greatest burdens were focused in San Bartolo and Solanda. The proposed workflow presents a clear and replicable method for turning noise maps into actionable exposure and health indicators in data-limited urban contexts.

Strategic noise maps represent a valuable tool for the characterisation of urban soundscapes, but their transformation into indicators related to the exposed population and health effects remains a matter of methodology, particularly in the absence of dwelling-level information. A workflow at the façade level for the estimation of population exposure to road-traffic noise and high sleep disturbance in six sampled sectors of Quito, Ecuador, is developed and tested. The workflow combines outputs from strategic noise maps, cadastral and land-use data, population of census sectors, receiver levels on façades, and three alternative methods of population assignment consistent with CNOSSOS-EU. Sectors were also classified by urban–methodological complexity to assess whether the sensitivity of exposure estimates varies across urban fabrics. The results show that the choice of population-assignment method substantially affects exposure and high sleep disturbance estimates. The largest absolute differences were observed where the relevant nighttime exposure coincided with larger retained residential populations, particularly in San Bartolo and Solanda. Relative sensitivity indicators showed a different ordering, highlighting the need to distinguish practical burden differences from proportional methodological sensitivity. These findings indicate that urban-form descriptors are useful for contextualising method sensitivity, although the results should be interpreted as descriptive rather than causal. At the aggregate level, the estimated HSD varied from 283.8 under M2 to 718.5 under M1, a 2.5-fold difference. The greatest burdens were focused on San Bartolo and Solanda. The proposed workflow presents a clear and replicable method for turning noise maps into actionable exposure and health indicators in data-limited urban contexts.