QUIETE: a scheme for a new index of the environmental quality of green areas
Notwithstanding the green areas are important for preserving and promoting the health of population, they are often exposed to noise pollution, especially in urban areas. However, the perceived quality of a green area does not depend only by its sonic environment, as all the human senses contribute...
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Published in | Noise mapping Vol. 3; no. 1; pp. 49 - 58 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
De Gruyter Open
23.03.2016
De Gruyter |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | Notwithstanding the green areas are important
for preserving and promoting the health of population,
they are often exposed to noise pollution, especially in urban
areas. However, the perceived quality of a green area
does not depend only by its sonic environment, as all the
human senses contribute to form the individual appraisal
together with other features of the area. Thus, an holistic
approach is required as that offered by the soundscape approach.
The present paper proposes the scheme of a new index,
QUIETE, to quantify the quality of a public park, taking
into account its perceived overall quality and the relative
sound level determined by the difference between the
noise descriptor LA (i.e. LAeq, LA50, . . .) and a reference
level Lref . By the QUIETE index it is easy to identify the areas
requiring noise mitigation actions, and provide understandable
information to the users of the park on the areas
for their enjoyable fruition. The formulation of the QUIETE
index is rather flexible and the reference level Lref has to
be fixed considering the objective to accomplish. To evaluate
the feasibility and potential of QUIETE, it has been
applied to the data collected in 8 urban parks in Milan and
Rome with different location (from downtown to suburban
area) and size. The Lref value has been set at the noise
limit issued by current Italian legislation for green areas
(LAeq = 50 dBA for day-time). A “tentative” rating scale
for QUIETE is also proposed and its values are reported by
a colored scale on the map of the park to summarize the
data and to pr |
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ISSN: | 2084-879X 2084-879X |
DOI: | 10.1515/noise-2016-0004 |