Acoustical safety as important as comfort and wellness

Abstract

Needless to say, the points of comfort and wellness are very important for the evaluation of spaces. In addition, how about the point of safety? This doesn’t mean structural safety of buildings or safety to prevent crimes. For example, the luck of intelligibility of evacuation announcement in an emergency, this is an unsafe situation. It’s a matter of “acoustical safety.” To use absorption materials in spaces is very effective on the point of comfort and it leads to be better condition on the point of safety at the same time; however, the point of “acoustical safety” should be emphasized more. In the current situation in Japan, the consideration of using absorption materials for comfortable and safe spaces doesn’t seem to be enough. This is a common understanding in our Japanese researchers on architectural acoustics. Therefore, a committee in Architectural Institute of Japan published a book in order to be popular using absorption materials. In this presentation, the contents about the book and the discussions up to publication will be introduced, in addition to some works on acoustical safety.Needless to say, the points of comfort and wellness are very important for the evaluation of spaces. In addition, how about the point of safety? This doesn’t mean structural safety of buildings or safety to prevent crimes. For example, the luck of intelligibility of evacuation announcement in an emergency, this is an unsafe situation. It’s a matter of “acoustical safety.” To use absorption materials in spaces is very effective on the point of comfort and it leads to be better condition on the point of safety at the same time; however, the point of “acoustical safety” should be emphasized more. In the current situation in Japan, the consideration of using absorption materials for comfortable and safe spaces doesn’t seem to be enough. This is a common understanding in our Japanese researchers on architectural acoustics. Therefore, a committee in Architectural Institute of Japan published a book in order to be popular using absorption materials. In this presentation, the contents about the book and the discu...