Urban Sound Auralization and Visualization Framework—Case Study at IHTApark

Abstract

In the context of acoustic urban planning, the use of noise mappings is a worldwide well-established practice. Therefore, the noise levels in an urban environment are calculated based on models of the sound sources, models of the physical sound propagation effects and the position of the receivers in the area of interest. However, the noise mapping method is limited to sound levels in frequency bands due to missing temporal and spectral information of the sound signals. This, in turn, leads to missing information about the qualitative sound properties, as they can be evaluated in psychoacoustic parameters. Beyond the scope of the classical noise mapping, auralization and physically-based simulation of sound fields can be applied to urban scenarios in the context of urban soundscape analysis. By supporting the auralization technology with a visual counterpart of the urban space, a plausible virtual representation of a real environment can be achieved. The presented framework combines the possibilities of the open-source auralization tool Virtual Acoustics with 3D visualization. In order to enable studies with natural human response or for public communication of urban design projects, those virtual scenes can be either reproduced with immersive technologies—such head-mounted displays (HMD)—or using online video platforms and traditional playback devices. The paper presents an overview of what physical principles can already be simulated, which technological considerations need to be taken into account, and how to set up such environment for auralization and visualization of urban scenes. We present the framework by the case study of IHTApark.