Abstract
Higher education institution campuses have been growing in size to become small cities that encompass all the infrastructures and offer many services to the university community. In order to achieve sustainable growth, it is necessary to take into account different environmental aspects, including the acoustic environment. In this paper, the application of a wireless acoustic sensor network is proposed for the long-term analysis of psychoacoustic parameters of the acoustic environment in a university campus. A network of acoustic nodes is designed and four nodes are deployed at both indoor and outdoor locations of the campus for environmental noise monitoring. A measurement campaign has been running continuously for nine months, including three months in which the state of emergency due to COVID-19 pandemic was established and the university switched to online classes. Acquired and stored data include not only the basic sound level parameters, e.g., equivalent or percentile sound pressure levels, but also psychoacoustic parameters, that are more related with noise assessment of the environment, e.g., loudness or sharpness sound levels. After analysing the acoustic environment of the campus through the complete set of nodes, results show two zones with higher noise indicators where some action plan should be developed. A detailed analysis of the temporal evolution of noise levels in these acoustically saturated zones is done, comparing values between a period of regular activity and the period of state of emergency. Different frequency distributions of sound levels are detected between day and evening periods providing a better insight into the noise sources. The results also show that binaural psychoacoustic annoyance values are correlated with loudness values in these locations, however sharpness values have minor effects.
Highlights
Exposed to a mixture of environmental pollutants [1], population that lives in large cities is in a constant loss of quality of life
City planners are working on the creation of sustainable cities trying to achieve cities with low to zero carbon emissions, build sustainable infrastructures and promote Higher Education Institutions (HEI), where sustainability practices are embedded in their curricula and facilities
The data captured with the wireless acoustic sensor network (WASN) during the measurement campaign described in previous section is analyzed and discussed
Summary
Exposed to a mixture of environmental pollutants [1], population that lives in large cities is in a constant loss of quality of life. Regarding social responsibility practices for HEI, a recent analysis [14] recommends the development of noise maps per building and the proposal of some actions to reduce the sound levels if needed These practices related to noise obtained the lowest score in the environmental field in a research survey carried out in Spanish universities [15]. It is observed that within the environmental management in HEI, acoustic environment and noise pollution should be present in the sustainability studies, there is still a lack of proposals and actions to control them. The application of a wireless acoustic sensor network (WASN), see Section 2 for related works, is proposed for the long-term analysis of psychoacoustic parameters of the acoustic environment in HEI.
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