Program – urban-sound-symposium.org

Urban Sound Symposium

April 28-30, 2025

Plenary program overview

The symposium will take place on three days; each day is dedicated to a main topic:

Monday, 28 April 2025: Applications and interventions
Tuesday, 29 April 2025: Technology and impact
Wednesday, 30 April 2025: Noise policy and urban sound planning

The program of the symposium is shown below.

Monday, 28 April 2025 – Applications and interventions

Start	End	Topic	Title	Speaker(s) / Organizer(s)
08:00	12:30	Workshop	Comparative evaluation of the acoustic quality of urban recreation sites	Laura Estévez-Mauriz & Beat Hohmann
11:30	13:00		Registration
13:00	13:30	Opening	Welcome by local organizers	Jean-Marc Wunderli
13:30	14:00	Application	Knowledge transfer from sound-related expertise into sound aware urban planning and design practice	Trond Maag & Arnthrudur Gisladottir
14:10	14:40	Application	Measuring the tranquil city - co-design and development of an impact assessment toolkit for equitable urban wellbeing	Eleanor Ratcliffe
14:50	15:40		Poster pitch & Coffee break
15:40	16:10	Intervention	Detection of loud vehicles / acoustic monitoring	Fanny Mietlicki
16:20	16:50	Intervention	Landscape acoustics as artistic environmental practice: a field report	Nadine Schütz
17:00	18:00		Current research calls: setting up a working group for a European Union project	Josep Llorca-Bofí

Tuesday, 29 April 2025 – Technology and impact

Start	End	Topic	Title	Speaker(s) / Organizer(s)
09:00	09:30	Technology	Road traffic noise modeling and monitoring	Claudio Guarnaccia
09:40	10:10	Technology	Measurement, analysis and auralisation of drone noise	Antonio Torija
10:20	11:10		Poster pitch & Coffee break
11:10	11:40	Technology	Sensing the city using sound sources: outcomes of the CENSE project	Mathieu Lagrange
11:50	12:20	Technology	Large scale facade level participatory monitoring in Flanders (De Oorzaak)	Cedric Vuye
12:30	14:00		Lunch
14:00	14:30	Impact	AI for wildlife sounds: How best to (re)train deep learning models for bioacoustic monitoring	Dan Stowell
14:40	15:10	Impact	The challenges to evaluate health benefits from noise interventions	Martin Röösli
15:20	16:10		Poster pitch & Coffee break
16:10	16:40	Impact	Community noise and environmental justice: problems and solutions	Erica Walker
16:50	17:20	Impact	Of Silos, soundscapes and sonic justice: thoughts on dialogic urban sound studies	Laudan Nooshin
17:30	21:30		Conference dinner

Wednesday, 30 April 2025 – Noise policy and Urban sound planning

Start	End	Topic	Title	Speaker(s) / Organizer(s)
09:00	09:30	Policy	Night-life and more	Daniel Steele
09:40	10:10	Policy	Establishing soundscape in law through the Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) (Wales) Act 2024, and its implications for public health and well-being	Martin McVay
10:20	11:10		Poster pitch & Coffee break
11:10	11:40	Planning	Dealing with noise in urban planning - both a challenge and a potential	Christa Reicher
11:50	12:20	Planning	Acoustic protocols for urban places evaluation: expert feedback	Laura Estévez-Mauriz & Beat Hohmann
12:30	14:00		Lunch
14:00	15:30	Panel	Urban sound quo vadis?	All
15:30	16:00		Farewell

Abstracts – Applications and Interventions

Knowledge transfer from sound-related expertise into sound-aware urban planning and design practice

Trond Maag and Arnthrudur Gisladottir

We will explore the transfer of sound-related expertise from academic and research contexts into urban design and planning practice. Working with sound in cities can be complex, and projects focusing on sound and noise often fail to sustain good design intentions through multiple project stages.

Planners and developers, working from strategic definition and master planning to the building permit, must adhere to their interpretation of best practices, while such knowledge is rarely on hand. Similarly, regulations provide urban planners and designers little help in avoiding unfavourable decisions in the early planning stages, which cannot be rectified later on. We can also observe planning decisions taken in non-sound-related contexts, which sometimes affect urban sound even more significantly than sound-related decisions. Accordingly, the acoustic environment possesses only fragments of planned and designed sound quality, and achieving sound-related objectives to make cities more environmentally friendly, healthier and inviting remains challenging.

Drawing from our experience, we will outline appropriate formats through which urban sound planners can support planners and developers using acoustic analysis and modelling, communication, walks and site observations, and securing value and legibility. We also encourage experts to share and communicate their knowledge beyond their discipline, across all work formats as part of their daily tasks.

Measuring the tranquil city: co-design and development of an impact assessment toolkit for equitable urban wellbeing

Eleanor Ratcliffe

Cities are at the frontline of health, social, and environmental crises. Urban residents are often exposed to levels of air and noise pollution that negatively impact both physical and mental health. These stressors are not equally distributed, with people who are older, of low socioeconomic status, and/or from an ethnic minority background experiencing greater exposure. Natural environments can provide a buffer against stress, but minoritised groups also experience barriers to accessing high-quality natural spaces in cities.

Charities, non-governmental organisations, landscape architects and developers are increasingly implementing initiatives in cities that seek to reconnect different communities to nature. These can include, e.g., urban greening, route mapping, nature-based health interventions, and environmental education initiatives. The impacts of these initiatives are often reported in objective terms, such as environmental quality, numbers of people engaged, and money spent. Environmental social science research shows that engagement with nature (including soundscapes) improves subjective outcomes such as psychological wellbeing, but organisations who implement these initiatives may lack the resources and/or social science knowledge necessary to collect and analyse such data. Methods of assessment also need to be tailored towards relevant communities.

During a recent British Academy Fellowship, I worked with Tranquil City, an environmental research and innovation company, to develop inclusive and accessible tools that can evidence the psycho-social impact of urban nature interventions. In this talk I will present examples of these tools, co-developed with several non-academic partners within urban case studies. I will provide reflections on what academic researchers can learn from working with industry practitioners and communities to better support real-world impact for healthier and more tranquil cities, with emphasis on experiences of soundscapes.

Presentation and missions of a noise observatory / Development of a sound radar designed to track down excessively noisy vehicles (abstract)

Fanny Mietlicki

Bruitparif is the noise observatory for the Paris region which has a population of over 12 million inhabitants. It is an association made up of around a hundred members representing local authorities, government departments, economic activities and environmental protection associations. With a team of 18 engineers and technicians, Bruitparif carries out several missions:

Characterizing noise in the region by conducting innovation projects, managing a noise monitoring network (more than 200 permanent measuring stations), producing strategic noise maps and carrying out population surveys).
Advancing knowledge of the health and socio-economic impacts of noise (participation in research programmes, carrying out studies to quantify the health impacts of noise and the social cost of noise).
Supporting the implementation of public policies aimed at improving the noise environment.
Informing the general public.

Bruitparif works mainly in the Paris region, but also in other areas in France and abroad as part of partnership projects or experiments. Bruitparif also has a subsidiary, Viginoiz (http://viginoiz.com), which markets and distributes the products and services resulting from its innovations.

Since 2021, Bruitparif has been developing a sound radar system to monitor and penalise excessive noise emissions from vehicles. Inspired by the technology already used in the ‘medusa’ environmental sensor that the association developed and patented in 2019, the ‘Hydra’ sound radar goes one step further by making it possible to determine the exact distance between the noise source and the sensor and to take a photo of the vehicle’s registration plate. The first version of ‘Hydra’ has already been successfully tested in several cities in France and Europe as part of trial runs (i.e. without fines being issued at this stage). Bruitparif is in the process of having the final version of Hydra, which has been improved in terms of its metrological accuracy, its identification capacity and its mechanics, approved by the French metrology laboratory. This legal metrology approval is expected by the end of 2025, and will pave the way for the implementation of Hydra with fines.

For more information, visit http://www.bruitparif.fr

Landscape acoustics as artistic environmental practice: a field report

Nadine Schütz

Landscape sounds. Manifold acoustic agency inheres in the material and immaterial ingredients of (urban) landscape design. Inversely, fundamental perceptual landscape qualities such as vivacity, spatiality and involvement are intrinsically created and experienced through sound. As a landscape acoustic practitioner, I explore, activate and augment these sonic landscape potentials through interventions which blur the boundaries between art and environmental design. In the form of a field report, I will present recent project realizations and the associated observations, feedback, lessons learnt and findings.

Abstracts – Technology and impact

Road traffic noise modelling and monitoring

Claudio Guarnaccia

Traffic noise pollution is a critical environmental issue with significant impacts on human health and well-being in urban areas. Accurate monitoring and modelling of road traffic noise are essential for effective noise mitigation and urban planning strategies. A key aspect is the application of microscopic and dynamic simulations to enhance the accuracy of noise predictions. Unlike traditional models, in fact, microscopic simulations allow a detailed representation of individual vehicle behaviour, including acceleration, braking, and lane-changing dynamics. These features are crucial in capturing the variability of noise emissions under different traffic conditions. Additionally, dynamic simulations enable real-time analysis of noise propagation by incorporating time-dependent variations in traffic flow, road geometry, and meteorological conditions.

In this presentation some advanced methodologies for traffic noise prediction will be shown, integrating state-of-the-art modelling techniques and recently developed approaches, with special focus on dynamic models, for real time applications.

Measurement, analysis and auralisation of drone noise

Antonio Torija, Carlos Andrés Ramos Romero, Michael Lotinga, Marc Green, Nathan Green

Drone noise is an increasingly prominent area of research, driven by the rapid expansion of unmanned aerial systems and their complex acoustic impact on communities and environments. As a new source of environmental noise, particular emphasis is in understanding the sources of drone noise under real operating conditions, and the effects of drone noise on human and wildlife health and wellbeing. Due to the characteristics of drone noise, with significant tonal and high frequency noise, and specific operating characteristics, flying closer to communities, the measurement procedures, modelling tools and noise metrics for conventional aircraft might not be of application for drone noise.

This presentation will cover the latest developments for the measurement and characterization of drone noise under representative operating conditions. A simulation and assessment framework for drone noise developed at the University of Salford is described. The framework includes a comprehensive database of drone sounds, including vehicles with varying type and payload, and flyover, hover, take-off and landing operations; an auralisation framework for multi-rotors accounting for dynamic behaviours of drones under in-flight operations; and psychoacoustic models for drone noise annoyance prediction, accounting for the specific acoustic characteristics of drone, the masking effect of ambient noise and the number of events. This drone noise simulation and assessment framework offers a valuable tool to support decision-making for key infrastructure (e.g., vertiport location) and acceptable drone flight paths.

Sensing the city using sound sources: outcomes of the CENSE project

Mathieu Lagrange

The city is arguably a very complex system to monitor and describe. The deployment of acoustic sensor networks can lead to new ways of doing so, potentially at scale. From the data produced by those networks, identifying sound sources is an emerging method of interest to provide meaningful information to the citizens. During this talk, I will discuss the outcomes of the deployment of such a network in the city of Lorient (France) that operated from 2020 to 2021, including notably the French COVID lockdown period.

Large scale façade level participatory monitoring in Flanders (De Oorzaak)

Cedric Vuye et al.

Background: To better understand the effects of the urban soundscape on annoyance, sleep and stress, a large-scale citizen science (CS) project entitled “De Oorzaak” is ongoing in Flanders, Belgium. This CS project is an initiative of the University of Antwerp, the Antwerp University Hospital (UZA) and the newspaper De Morgen. Further (financial) support is given by the Flemish government (Departments of Environment, Health, and Mobility and Public Works), Lantis, De Lijn, City of Ghent, City of Leuven, Province of Antwerp, and three industrial partners: Orange (data communication), Natus (sleep sensor) and Sorama (De Oorzaak app).

Methodology: The project consists of three major parts and a number of smaller research initiatives. First, over a period of a year, objective acoustical data from approx. 1500 measurement points are obtained using a smart sound sensor network in three major Flemish cities (Antwerp, Ghent, and Leuven), installed by the citizen scientists at their façade below their bedroom window. Second, the subjective impact of the urban soundscape in Flanders is captured by different surveys (e.g. an anonymous soundwalk with over 4500 respondents, the Large Sound Survey with almost 10000 respondents, weekly surveys with 1500 respondents, …). Last, 100 participants from Antwerp undergo a one-night sleep study in their home setting, supplemented by a stress analysis focused on cortisol levels (using saliva samples) and hearing tests (@UZA), to obtain their hearing thresholds and uncomfortable loudness levels.

Some of the smaller research initiatives include: a) an Apple Watch study where >100 citizen scientists donated their sleep and noise data, collected over a period of six weeks by native Apple apps; b) use of the De Oorzaak app where participants do a soundwalk; c) a six-month follow-up of the installation of new noise barriers in Aalter at the façade of twenty citizen scientists; d) a patient study at UZA; and e) students from twelve secondary schools completing surveys on noise exposure and hearing protection.

AI for wildlife sounds: How best to (re)train deep learning models for bioacoustic monitoring

Dan Stowell

The sounds that animals make are a unique source of evidence about their behaviour and their population sizes, which can be vital for biodiversity estimates. In the past ten years, AI methods have made it tractable to detect and classify these sounds at large scale.

I will introduce our work on deep learning for bioacoustic AI monitoring, and the strategy for monitoring nature at Europe-wide scale. The most well-developed use case is birdsong monitoring, but we also target insects, anurans and bats. I will discuss specifics of application in urban contexts. In more detail, we will then consider the technical details of creating accurate, high-volume deep learning methods for wildlife monitoring despite limitations in the datasets and difficult acoustic environments. Methods include fine-tuning and distilling pre-trained models, active learning, and probing the characteristics of different deep learning architectures. I will present recent results on the most generalisable methods, and approaches for deploying these at continental scale.

The challenges to evaluate health benefits from noise interventions

Martin Röösli

Epidemiological research in the last decade has revealed associations between various cardiometabolic and mental diseases in relation to road, railway and aircraft noise exposure. However, it is less clear how effective interventions aimed at reducing transportation noise exposure are for human health. Typically, interventions are classified as source interventions, path interventions, infrastructural changes, other physical interventions, and education/communication interventions. In practice, interventions are often associated with change effects, which may depend on contextual and non-acoustical factors such concomitant communication activities. Interventions may also come with co-benefits or trade-offs and thus the overall impact on human health may differ from epidemiological research addressing long-term exposure conditions under steady state conditions.

The aim of the TraNQuiIL 2 study (Toward prevention of health effects from acute and chronic noise exposure) is to evaluate the health effects of changes in noise exposure on health relevant outcomes. This includes the investigation of highly irregular military aircraft noise on mental health in patients from a psychiatric clinic located near a military airport. We found that during three hours after military aircraft overflight events on-demand sedative and analgesic drugs were statistically significantly more often administered. Further, we used data from the nationwide Swiss National Cohort study to evaluate the effects of moving place of residence as well as noise protection measures on cardiovascular mortality. Until 2015, about 4% and 2 % of the population profited from at least 1 dB noise reduction due to noise barriers or low noise pavement, respectively. A health risk assessment using most recent findings on the association between road traffic noise and all-natural cause mortality indicates that this road traffic noise exposure reduction would translate into 87 deaths prevented per year in Switzerland. This figure will be compared with the results from the intervention analysis

Community noise and environmental justice: problems and solutions

Erica Walker

Community noise and environmental injustice issues often intersect when poor urban planning and superficial regulatory policy collides with vulnerable communities. Resulting are communities, burdened with a host of health and well-being disruptions, being unable to turn down their volume. In this talk, we will investigate three such communities and the work being done to bring about better health, well-being, and peace.

Of silos, soundscapes and sonic justice: thoughts on dialogic urban sound studies

Laudan Nooshin

One of the great strengths of sound studies – and by extension urban sound studies – is its intensely rich potential for interdisciplinary collaboration. Sound is so elemental that it engages a vast range a scholarly areas from literary studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, geography, music and sound studies through to health sciences, engineering, environmental studies, physics, acoustics, biological sciences, and more. Almost every field of study has the potential to contribute to our understanding of sound as a multi-faceted social, cultural and physical phenomenon.

And yet, scholarly work on sound has tended to be quite ‘silo-ed’, with relatively little exchange (or even agreement on terminology) between the ‘hard’ sciences, social sciences, humanities and creative arts and between primarily quantitative and qualitative approaches to sound.

Within my own field of music studies, there has been a strong turn to the sonic over the past 15 years or so, seen in journals such as Sound Studies (started 2015) and the blog Sounding Out! (started 2009). Largely tracing roots back to the work of Canadian composer, music educator and environmentalist R. Murray Schafer and ethnomusicologist Steven Feld in the 1960s and 70s, today many scholars are exploring sound in relation to the social, cultural, historical and artistic. Indeed, it seems there is hardly a publication or conference paper these days that doesn’t include the word ‘sound’ – and more usually ‘soundscape’ (coined by Michael Southworth in 1967 in a study of the sounds of Boston) – in the title.

Drawing on examples from two projects: one on the sounds of Tehran and the other on sound and equity in public space, this presentation asks how we can move beyond our silos and capitalise on the strengths offered by sound’s ubiquity in order to create fruitful dialogue and exchange and a richer field of sound studies.

Abstracts – Noise policy and urban sound planning

Night-life and more. Soundscape planning is urban planning; soundscape design is urban design

Daniel Steele

Researchers in the soundscape community have been understandably preoccupied with the desire to have more meaningful and productive exchanges with professionals of the built environment at cities in order to mobilize their research and capture the benefits of a human-centered approach to sound and noise planning and design. Building on my experience on ‘both sides’, as a soundscape researcher and a public sector professional, I present a critical perspective on the effective ways of bridging theory and practice, including examples from two cross-cutting projects: a nightlife research project in Montreal and a stadium project in Boston. These perspectives lead to recommendations for how to introduce and socialize sound concepts and how to encourage dialog that mobilizes sound insights into projects.

Establishing soundscape in law through the Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) (Wales) Act 2024, and its implications for public health and well-being

Martin McVay

Environmental public health in Wales means not only minimising exposures to, and resulting ill-health from, environmental hazards, but also the creation of healthy, fair and sustainable environments and communities. This encompasses all the positive and negative effects, long-term and short-term, of indoor and outdoor environments on people’s physical and mental health and well-being.

Our Well-being of Future Generations Act requires public bodies to act in accordance with the sustainable development principle to achieve seven well-being goals. These include a healthier Wales, a more equal Wales and a Wales of cohesive communities. Working towards these goals requires breaking down policy siloes and involving a diversity of people in decisions that affect them. Taken as a whole, the elements contained in the Well-being of Future Generations Act facilitated a transition in Welsh Government policy concerning the acoustic environment, away from traditional noise control, towards the creation of healthier soundscapes, where the emphasis is on people’s perception and experience of sound in context.

Emissions, exposure and human response to air pollution and airborne sound are inter-related. It therefore makes sense to integrate policies and interventions aimed at improving air and soundscape quality. As proposals were developed for Wales’s Clean Air Bill, the opportunity arose to use this legislation to align Welsh Ministers’ and local authorities’ duties in respect of our national air quality strategy with duties around our Noise and Soundscape Plan. This resulted in the Bill becoming law as the Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) (Wales) Act.

As we spend most of our time indoors, our interest is now increasing in indoor environmental quality. This includes indoor air quality, soundscapes and smellscapes, light levels, thermal comfort and moisture control, individuals’ ability to make choices affecting their surroundings, and the cumulative impact of all these inter-related factors on occupants’ physical and mental well-being.

Dealing with noise in urban-planning – both a challenge and a potential

Christa Reicher, Moritz Lippold, Christoph Klanten

Noise is a challenge in urban development, influencing architectural concepts and urban structures. Instead of solely focusing on noise mitigation, it is crucial to recognize noise as a potential design element. The vision of urban development—particularly the concept of a mixed-use city—often contrasts with noise protection legislation and conventional noise control methods. To resolve this tension, integrative planning approaches are needed—ones that embed noise as a structuring factor within urban concepts. Viewing noise not only as a challenge but as a dynamic component of spatial planning enables innovative solutions that harmonize acoustic quality with urban diversity.

Acoustic protocols for urban places evaluation: expert feedback

Laura Estévez-Mauriz, Beat Hohmann

The session is focused on presenting insights from Monday workshop session regarding participants’ feedback. The objective is on insight learning about how different set of questions from various protocols, including the ISO soundscape standard, assess sound quality and for what purpose (description, understanding, evaluation, improvement, communication). The session aims to offer an interactive discussion with the audience on how this information can guide practitioners in their decision-making regarding urban sound planning and to reflect about the potential that such approaches could have for promoting healthy urban environments.

The visited sites will be presented both in pictures and 3D sound recordings (5.1.2). The emphasis is mainly on green places as they are the ones being visited; however, the intention is to extend the discussion to urban places.