Conscious Walk Methodology Design for Acoustic, Air Quality and Biodiversity Evaluation in Urban Environments

Abstract

Environmental noise and air pollution, as well as poor green infrastructure quality, are major concerns for the European population due to their impacts on citizens’ health, especially for those citizens living in urban environments, which materializes in a rising number of complaints to public administration. This issue is further stressed for urban areas located close to aggressive sources of such pollutants, such as airports, railways, highways, or leisure areas. To attend to this situation from the viewpoint of citizens’ everyday lives, this paper proposes a hybrid methodology in the form of a collective campaign in which citizens, especially those from environments that have a stronger impact, cooperate with scientists to collect high quality acoustic, chemical, and biodiversity data. The campaign consists of a conscious walk that considers acoustic measurements conducted by both experts and citizens, coupled with air quality measurements and biodiversity descriptions. The final goal of the method is to obtain subjective and objective data on the soundscape, air quality, and biodiversity in order to evaluate a pre-designed route in an urban location, namely, in the surroundings of Parc de la Ciutadella, Barcelona, Spain.