Abstract

A questionnaire study was conducted to investigate the soundscape preferences of the sonic environment in Cairo. Participants, who were Cairo residents, were questioned about their appraisal of familiar urban soundscapes in a close- and open-ended format questionnaire. Psycholinguistic data analysis of verbal descriptions expressed by respondents was conducted to identify the relevance of semantic categories of environmental sounds and quantitative soundscape aspects for the urban sonic environment of Cairo. Results confirmed a direct relevance of the linguistic semantic auditory judgment and of the outputs of the quantitative close-ended questions. Cairenes were also found to express their sonic environment linguistically based on physical properties rather than semantic features and values. Analyzing the relative annoyance increase (RAI ) of the close-ended part, overall positive RAI values for all sound categories reveal how sensitive to noise Cairo residents are. Results further showed that at an RAI value of approximately 27%, sound category perception transforms from positive to negative.

Abstract

International audience; Electric cars tend to become the emerging generation of automotive vehicles for the next decades. One of their main features is that they are rather silent and then present issues as: must electric cars be sonified for preventing pedestrians from dangers? If necessary, what kind of sound signal is to be put to fulfill safety rules without contributing to the environmental pollution ? Moreover, because the starting point of this thought is nearly a blank page, it opens a large field of experimentation on different aspects of sound design: innovative approaches to create sounds in interactive configurations, role of sound to convey functional informations, aesthetics qualities or even emotional feelings, etc. In the frame of an industrial collaboration, we tried to handle these questions by examining the state-of-the-art in that domain, defining the specifications that sound has to comply with (warning for direction and speed, driver feedback of speed and functionning, various branding components, etc.), prototyping various ideas of interactive sonification, and initiating evaluation experiments especially in terms of primary functions (notification of presence and approaching speed). Some results from different steps of this work together with overall reflections and perspectives on the general topic will be presented and discussed.

Abstract

"jats:p"Limited Traffic Zone (LTZ) is a planning strategy that is more and more adopted by municipalities in Europe to improve their environmental conditions. It consists in the prohibition for traditional vehicles to circulate in specific areas. Although the main aim is to tackle air pollution problems, positive effects are registered in terms of reduction of noise annoyance and in terms of improved “quality of life” if specific conditions are respected. On the other side under the drive of the global market, the number of circulating electric vehicles in urban sites is also increasing. In the next years we expect to experience a new and not well-known urban soundscape."/jats:p" "jats:p"In this paper is presented an overview of recent urban projects and policies that deal with noise control and how these experiences will match into the next years with the sound characteristics of new electric vehicles for private and public transportation. Document type: Article