Soundscape Assessment for Indoor Spaces: A case of the Higher Education Environment

Abstract

As a concept, an indoor soundscape is an innovative approach to building environments with a shape that "sounds good," meeting the preferences and needs of the occupants and established according to their unique indoor soundscape perception. This paper presents the assessment of the indoor soundscape regarding objective acoustic parameters such as the equivalent noise levels (Leq) and the reverberation time (RT), and subjective method including a questionnaire survey (n = 403) in three buildings of Engineering in Al-Azhar university. The data analyses were conducted using SPSS v.21 statistical software. Overall, results show that indoor assessment is associated with five factors that are: acoustic environment factors, demographics and social factors, sound sources, duration and time of measurement, and non-acoustic parameters. The conceptual framework showed the relations between the acoustic environment, built environment, and auditory perception of university students and staff. Various buildings present a series of acoustic problems based on different activities that change the perception of users, so the outcomes feature the importance in the future considering the type of activity as a key factor in assessing the effects of noise on humans.