Methods - Soundscape Ecology: Principles, Patterns, Methods and Applications - page 254

Fig. 9.21 A typical Kano
plot, where the horizontal
axis indicates the degree of
expectation of a product or
of a service. The vertical
axis expresses the level of
satisfaction of the customer
that is split into three
components: performance
or satisfier, basic or must-be
requirements, and
excitement or attractive
requirements (Reproduced
with permission from
Jennings and Cain 2012 )
9.15 The Assessment of the Human-Perceived Soundscape
Managers, decision makers, and policymakers feel growing concern for noise
pollution. The universality and severity of noise penetration mean a noise impact
assessment should be considered an important procedure both in developing areas
and in protected areas.
The soundscape approach highlights the necessity to integrate the sonic ambi-
ence from different perspectives that should not be limited to only physical
attributes of the sound.
In fact, study of the soundscape requires diverse fields of practices and
competencies: sound quality, human acoustic comfort in buildings, music, and
relationships with wilderness and recreation management, urban and house design,
landscape planning, and management.
The soundscape analysis represents a complex exercise that is carried out to
improve the quality of the human sonic environment. In fact, the quality of a
soundscape largely depends on the cultural filter used to separate the different
components of the sonic environment (Table 9.3 ).
The context in which the information is collected affects the final assessment.
The context is represented by place, dimension of the physical environment,
personal activity in the place, dimension of the social environment, and personal
dimension.
The spatial dimension of a soundscape allows distinguishing a background from
a foreground and classifying a sound as intrusive or acceptable; this largely depends
on the role of the context.
To create a standardization for an assessment, a sonic procedure is necessary to
create categories of places (indoor or outdoor) where outdoors must further distin-
guish urban, rural, wilderness, and underwater areas and adopt a detailed semantic
of sound classification.