Subjective evaluation of environmental sounds in context - towards Soundscape Indices (SSID)

The subjective evaluation of environmental sounds is always affected by the context, including the interrelationships between person and activity and place, in space and time, as defined in ISO 12913. Based on Soundscape Indices (SSID), an ongoing European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project, this paper presents a soundscape approach, where contextual factors are taken into account. The following works are briefly introduced: (1) The SSID protocol for field surveys and the corresponding International Soundscape Database (ISD); (2) Analysis of the effects of various factors, especially contextual factors, where differences in various languages and cultures are also considered; (3) Soundscape prediction models towards Soundscape Indices (SSID), which, by integrating the effects of context, will adequately reflect levels of human comfort, compared to decibel-based metrics. The SSID is in two forms/levels, a set of indices for aiding designs, and a single index for ranking different designs.