Acoustic quality and health in urban environments (SALVE) – a pilot study in the metropolitan Ruhr region, Germany

ABSTRACT

Acoustic quality has long been a concern in the disciplines of architecture, building technology, and construction engineering. In health research, acoustic quality has been understood as a health risk factor of noise and, thus, limited to reducing sound decibel levels. Noise mitigation measures exclusively aim to reduce noise levels below a threshold. In contrast, acoustic environments are a composition of all acoustic events of the natural and physical setting, typically determined by sound level, frequency, time, and space. Thus, soundscape ecology provides a suitable methodical approach to analyze associations between acoustic quality, the built environment, and human health. This paper debates how SALVE, a two-year interdisciplinary pilot study, may fill the knowledge gap and contribute to sound and health research. SALVE aims to identify criteria for human health-promoting acoustic environments. By making annual direct and automated auditory measurements of a robust land-use sample, a large multi-seasonal urban sound dataset will be established. This data is merged with health data from the population-based Heinz Nixdorf Recall study and will form a starting point for an innovative approach to better understand the impacts of acoustic quality on urban public health beyond noise protection.

KEYWORDS:

• Acoustic environment
• soundscape
• sound index
• acoustic quality
• pilot study
• health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The pilot study SALVE is supported with funding from the Mercator Research Centre Ruhr. The responsibility for the content of this publication lies by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Robynne Sutcliffe

Robynne Sutcliffe has been a researcher at the Centre for Urban Epidemiology since 2013. She is the project and study coordinator for SALVE. She holds a BSc in European Public Health from Maastricht University and an MSc in Environment and Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as well as a Doctoral degree from the Medical Faculty at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Robynne Sutcliffe’s previous research is related to urban health, specially working with small-area and neighbourhood data in the Ruhr Region.

Bryce T. Lawrence

Bryce T. Lawrence is a research scientist and educator at the Department of Landscape Ecology and Landscape Planning at the TU Dortmund University’s Faculty of Spatial Planning in Germany.  He holds a BA in Geography, a Masters in Landscape Architecture and a Doctor of Engineering in Spatial Planning.  His research and professional practice work relates to water in environmental planning and design, landscape planning systems in developing countries, regional environmental footprint methods for the USA, and soundscape ecology and the urban acoustic environment.

Salman Ahmed

Salman Ahmed is a Geographical Information Systems and Data Analyst at the Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology in Essen, Germany since 2016. He has previously worked with GIS and spatial data in urban planning research at the Institute for Regional and Urban Development in Dortmund, Germany. He completed his Master’s education in Sustainable Urban Technologies at the University of Duisburg-Essen and his bachelors in Industrial Production Engineering at Osmania University in India. His work interests include spatial analytical methods, programming within the GIS domain and statistics. Outside of work, he is likely to be found planning another trip to one of the many well-known and crowded destinations in and around Europe.

Dietwald Gruehn

Dietwald Gruehn is a full professor of Landscape Ecology and Landscape Planning at the School of Spatial Planning, TU Dortmund University, Germany (since 2006). 2010 he was awarded adjunct professor at the School of Planning, Construction and Design, Michigan State University, USA. From 2014 to 2017 Dietwald Gruehn was adjunct professor at the Graduate School of National Public Policy at Chungnam National University, Republic of Korea. From 2005 to 2006 he was heading the Environmental Planning Department of today's Austrian Institute of Technology, Vienna (Austria). 2004 he was a visiting professor at the Institute of Landscape Planning, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (Sweden). Dietwald Gruehn holds a master-equivalent degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in landscape planning (1991) from Berlin University of Technology, where he also obtained his PhD (Dr.-Ing.) in 1997 as well as the “venia legendi” (Habilitation) in nature conservation and landscape management in 2004. His research interests comprise a broad range of topics within landscape and environmental planning.

Susanne Moebus

Susanne Moebus is a biologist and epidemiologist. Since 1999 she has been the head of the complementary medicine project area at the Institute for Mecical Infoamtics, Biometry and Epidemiology (IMIBE). In 2004 she became head of the Cardiovascular Epidemiology & Prevention working group. She is also Head of the Centre for Urban Epidemiology, IMIBE, University of Duisburg-Essen (2012). Until 2019 she was the President of the German Society for Social Medicine and Prevention (DGSMP). She is the project leader (PI) for SALVE.