AN EXPLORATORY REVIEW OF SOUNDSCAPE DESCRIPTOR MODELS FOR SOUNDSCAPE ASSESSMENT AND DESIGN PRACTICE

With focus on human perception, soundscape has attracted attention from multidisciplinary studies and soundscape design/management is believed to be a powerful and innovative tool to prevent and improve noisy environments. 1,2,3The first ISO standard of soundscape concept was published in 2014, and then followed by another two ISO standards on data collection and data analysis in 2018 and 2019, respectively (ISO 12913-1, ISO 12913-2, ISO 12913-3). 4,5,6 In the UK, an emphasis on the importance of appropriate soundscape in good design and planning firstly appears in PPW10 at the level of national policy (Planning Policy Wales - Edition 10). 7 It also shows a strong tendency of soundscape practice in the UK and across the EU. 8,9 It is believed that soundscape service will be emerging in industry in several years based on these evidences. However, there have been no clear guidelines on how to assess soundscapes and optimise soundscape design in practice. There is also a need for the development of soundscape tools in order to standardise and efficiently conduct soundscape assessment, as well as to predict the outcome of soundscapes of design scenarios in the early design stage.