Perceptual evaluation of the citizen’s acoustic environment from classic noise monitoring

Noise is one of the main environmental pollutants and it is becoming a growing public health concern due to its impact on the quality of life in urban areas. In order to monitor critical locations, Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks are being deployed, mainly in European and American cities. These networks focus primarily on measuring noise levels associated with road traffic. However, a number of different sounds are also present in urban areas and if our overall aim is to improve the quality of life of city inhabitants, then these additional sounds should be considered in accordance with the soundscape approach. This think piece proposes a step forward in the analysis of citizens’ perception of noise annoyance. We want to analyse the degree of annoyance caused by different sounds and study how this is related to psychoacoustic parameters. To this end, we propose to assess the acoustic environment by conducting perceptual tests on data gathered in a noise monitoring network. The proposed methodology is presented and discussed, and several open questions are posed to the research community.