Abstract
Abstract In a preceding report (UCL Open: Environment, 2020;1;6), an example of results on changes in the acoustic environment from a local-scale survey in a quiet residential area during and after the ‘state of emergency’ due to COVID-19 pandemic in Japan is presented: the noise level was 1–2 dBA lower during the state of emergency, which is smaller than reported from large cities. This note presents the results of a follow-up survey in the same area to provide some more examples to gain an insight into the acoustic environment in this area. In this note, the measurement results of noise levels in June 2020, a few weeks after the cancellation of the state of emergency, are mainly reported. As the results are almost the same as those from during the state of emergency, we can infer that either the noise level was reduced in June to a level that was almost the same as that during the state of emergency, or the noise level after its cancellation in May was possibly higher than usual. In either case, the change in noise level was small, and it was difficult to conclude which case was true.
Highlights
The COVID-19 outbreak has brought a lot of changes and challenges to our daily life, and its impact on the envi-In contrast to the drastic reduction of noise levels in busy and usually noisy areas reported from many countries, usually quiet residential areas have been discussed in only a limited number of studies [7, 8]
In a preceding report (UCL Open: Environment, 2020;1;6), an example of results on changes in the acoustic environment from a local-scale survey in a quiet residential area during and after the ‘state of emergency’ due to COVID-19 pandemic in Japan is presented: the noise level was 1–2 dBA lower during the state of emergency, which is smaller than reported from large cities
The results showed that, at least in the usually quiet area surveyed in the study, the reduction in noise due to the declaration of the state of emergency was about 1–2 dBA in LAeq (Equivalent Continuous Noise Level), which is significantly different from the reported differences in noise observed in large cities and airports
Summary
The COVID-19 outbreak has brought a lot of changes and challenges to our daily life, and its impact on the envi-. The results showed that, at least in the usually quiet area surveyed in the study, the reduction in noise due to the declaration of the state of emergency was about 1–2 dBA in LAeq (Equivalent Continuous Noise Level), which is significantly different from the reported differences in noise observed in large cities and airports. In this example, the considerations were limited to a very specific area, and the results, which were short-term averaged noise levels, are limited. It is easy to imagine that each region has its own unique behaviour and that it is not easy to generalise the results from a specific area to others, but it is considered necessary to accumulate examples from various areas to gain insight
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