Soundscape of Catalonia during the first COVID-19 lockdown: Preliminary results from the Sons al Balcó project

Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès, Roger Mallol, Ferran Orga, Marc Freixes, Xavi Baño, Maria Foraster
2021 Proceedings of The 3rd International Electronic Conference on Environmental Research and Public Health —Public Health Issues in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic   unpublished
Environmental noise affects the health and wellbeing of millions of people in Europe. 1 Some of the health effects of noise exposure include new cases of ischemic heart disease, chronic 2 annoyance, sleep disturbance and premature death. Our home soundscape, which involves negative 3 (i.e. noise) but also positive sounds (i.e. restorative sounds), changed drastically during the first 4 COVID-19 lockdown. In this context, the Sons al Balcó project is aimed at studying the effect that the 5 first
more » ... lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic has caused on the perception of both positive and 6 negative sounds in Catalonia. The hypothesis is that the decrease in outdoor noise, accompanied by 7 a rise of a more positive soundscape would have a positive impact on the degree of annoyance in 8 the population, increasing wellbeing. We performed a socio-acoustic survey targeting all the citizens 9 of Catalonia. The survey included socio-demographic questions as well as questions about 1) the 10 quality of the residential soundscape and 2) the individual positive and negative sound perception 11 before and during the lockdown for a range of sound sources. Furthermore, the survey allowed the 12 participants to upload videos of their residential soundscapes and to characterize several types of 13 sounds present during the recordings. More than 350 participants answered the questionnaire. As a 14 result, we depicted the first soundscape of Catalonia during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Future 15 work will allow us to perform a comparison between both objective (sound and video) and subjective 16 (questionnaires) measures, giving us the opportunity to compare aspects never previously studied. 17
doi:10.3390/ecerph-3-09069 fatcat:e33nt34f3babfe5rhzj7pwrgui