The surface condition of roadways has direct consequences on a wide range of processes related to... more The surface condition of roadways has direct consequences on a wide range of processes related to the transportation technology, quality of road facilities, road safety, and traffic noise emissions. Methods developed for detection of road surface condition are crucial for maintenance and rehabilitation plans, also relevant for driving environment detection for autonomous transportation systems and e-mobility solutions. In this paper, the clustering of the tire-road noise emission features is proposed to detect the condition of the wheel tracks regions during naturalistic driving events. This acoustic-based methodology was applied in urban areas under nonstop real-life traffic conditions. Using the proposed method, it was possible to identify at least two groups of surface status on the inspected routes over the wheel-path interaction zone. The detection rate on urban zone reaches 75% for renewed lanes and 72% for distressed lanes.
It seems obvious that the noise levels in local communities surrounding airports influences the l... more It seems obvious that the noise levels in local communities surrounding airports influences the level of acceptance of an airport. What is not so evident is the effect of nonacoustic factors that increase the societal rejection, like the lack of sensitivity and empathy from the authorities and airport managers, the lack of trust in them, the lack of information and transparency, the perception of being excluded from the decision making and so on. Complementary to the traditional strategies based on the reduction of noise exposure, a community engagement and involvement approach brings new possibilities to manage noise around airports, trying to exploit the non-acoustic factors that have negatively affected the community response. Building trust among the stakeholders is a key factor in this strategy, and it must be based on a long-term, honest, and transparent two-way communication. In the last decade, the huge growth of the information and communication technologies has opened new opportunities that the aviation organizations and stakeholders are starting to explore in depth trying to reduce the degree of rejection of the airport, which may compromise the utilization of existing and future infrastructure. In this review, we make a short introduction on aircraft noise health effects, to focus annoyance and the influence that non-acoustic factors on it. Then, we describe the basis of community engagement as a parallel approach to mitigate noise issues around airports, setting the focus on the noise metrics and the involvement techniques that must be implemented to engage the community.
Although pattern recognition technique has been largely used in many fields, it seems that very f... more Although pattern recognition technique has been largely used in many fields, it seems that very few studies have applied this technique to cooking processes. In this preliminary research, a new methodology has been developed and tested on a simple case of water boiling. Besides defining and analysing the efficacy and the performance of a statistical pattern recognition approach when applied to different signals (sound and vibration), an optimisation module has been proposed to boost the classification rates by adding syntactical analysis that enables to consider the inertia of the process. In the specific case of boiling water, almost 100% successful recognition has been reached. These results prove the validity of this methodology, opening new research lines for new scenarios such as different cooking process, acoustically polluted environments, sensors optimisation, etc.
The increasing importance of pollutant noise has led to the creation of many new noise testing la... more The increasing importance of pollutant noise has led to the creation of many new noise testing laboratories in recent years. For this reason and due to the legal implications that noise reporting may have, it is necessary to create procedures intended to guarantee the quality of the testing and its results. For instance, the ISO/IEC standard 17025:2005 specifies general requirements for the competence of testing laboratories. In this standard, interlaboratory comparisons are one of the main measures that must be applied to guarantee the quality of laboratories when applying specific methodologies for testing. In the specific case of environmental noise, round robin tests are usually difficult to design, as it is difficult to find scenarios that can be available and controlled while the participants carry out the measurements. Monitoring and controlling the factors that can influence the measurements (source emissions, propagation, background noise…) is not usually affordable, so the most extended solution is to create very effortless scenarios, where most of the factors that can have an influence on the results are excluded (sampling, processing of results, background noise, source detec-tion…) The new approach described in this paper only requires the organizer to make actual measurements (or prepare virtual ones). Applying and interpreting a common reference document (standard, regulation…), the participants must analyze these input data independently to provide the results, which will be compared among the participants. The measurement costs are severely reduced for the participants, there is no need to monitor the scenario conditions, and almost any relevant factor can be included in this methodology.
El ruido ha sido un problema desde épocas inmemoriales. Actualmente, el desarrollo industrial, as... more El ruido ha sido un problema desde épocas inmemoriales. Actualmente, el desarrollo industrial, así como la creciente demanda de transporte y ocio, contribuyen a una potenciación del problema en una sociedad en la que los aspectos sanitarios y de protección medioambiental cada vez tienen mayor importancia.
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
This article presents a method of calculation that allows us to separate the contribution of a sp... more This article presents a method of calculation that allows us to separate the contribution of a specific vehicle to the overall noise pollution in an urban environment. This method will provide local authorities with new operating models so that the cost of noise can be allocated to a vehicle according to factors such as the number of people it affects, the distance traveled and journey time, the driving style and the type of vehicle and tires. The proposed methodology can be adapted to different noise emission and propagation models, and we select as a basis the CNOSSOS-EU framework for compatibility with the European noise mapping strategy. This method will make it possible to reduce road traffic noise using two long-term strategies: (a) separate distributions of the costs of noise among the vehicles that generate it, with the aim of achieving (b) an increase in pro-environmental behavior with regard to this pollutant.
This paper describes a method for the automatic identification of acoustic events using a weighte... more This paper describes a method for the automatic identification of acoustic events using a weighted average of sound pressure and sound intensity measured at the vicinity of airports. The classification is based on the combination of different parameters using a technique conceptually similar to the sensor fusion: the indications of different classifiers are merged using the classification uncertainty as a figure of merit. The method uses the results of a training phase for the observation of statistical distributions of sound pressure and sound intensity related parameters. The different parameters' weights are computed analyzing the overlap of probability distributions of takeoffs and landings, so that more relevance is given to the quantities presenting a low risk of misclassification. The proposed method does not require any arbitrary assumption about the parameter effectiveness, given that the indications of multiple (potentially infinite) classifiers can be merged together with weights that minimize the chance of misclassification. The method has been validated with measurements performed at the Milan Malpensa airport (Italy). Results outlined that the proposed classification criterion correctly identifies approximately 99% of events.
Purpose of Review This review aims to analyze the effects of the pandemic on the world's sound en... more Purpose of Review This review aims to analyze the effects of the pandemic on the world's sound environment. Recent Findings The confinements associated with the pandemic led to a reduction in sound levels worldwide and a change in the perception of soundscapes in the absence of traffic noise and human-generated noise. Summary In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries and regions around the world adopted a series of interventions in 2020 that have been referred to as "lockdown" or "confinement." These sets of restrictions had a clear and obvious consequence derived from the absence of people in the streets and the reduction of daily activity and commuting, which caused an unprecedented silencing on a large scale. Along with the silence that ensued, the pandemic and the confinements affected acoustics and our relationship with sounds on different scales. In the cities, this phenomenon had a strong reduction in acoustic intensity due to the absence of vehicles on the streets. Perhaps this was more perceptible in our neighborhoods, with notable changes in their soundscapes, first due to the absence of people in the streets and later due to more outdoor activity derived from the fear of the spread of the virus in indoor spaces. The longer periods of time spent in our homes during the lockdowns also highlighted the importance of sound insulation in buildings and the acoustic conditioning of our schools or homes.
The influence of applying European default values to the making of a noise map was evaluated in a... more The influence of applying European default values to the making of a noise map was evaluated in a typical environment like Palma de Mallorca. These default values were compared with measured noise levels and the model was validated or rejected according to the deviations. After an unacceptable initial result, quantification of improvements to the process has been performed. This analysis demonstrates that the use of noise source default data in the absence of specific data can generate deviations in excess of more than 9 dB. Consequently, additional data gathered were of higher quality and were collected using different techniques. Different methodologies were also examined for collecting model input data that would be of the highest possible quality, by analysing the improvement generated in the reduction in the uncertainty of the final result of the noise map. Improvements to the process consisted of a developing a new traffic network with current data, obtaining more experimental...
The lockdown that Madrid has suffered during the months of March to June 2020 to try to control a... more The lockdown that Madrid has suffered during the months of March to June 2020 to try to control and minimize the spread of COVID-19 has significantly altered the acoustic environment of the city. The absence of vehicles and people on the streets has led to a noise reduction captured by the monitoring network of the City of Madrid. In this article, an analysis has been carried out to describe the reduction in noise pollution that has occurred and to analyze the changes in the temporal patterns of noise, which are strongly correlated with the adaptation of the population's activity and behavior to the new circumstances. The reduction in the sound level ranged from 4 to 6 dBA for the indicators L d , L e , and L n , and this is connected to a significant variation in the daily time patterns, especially during weekends, when the activity started earlier in the morning and lasted longer at midday, decreasing significantly in the afternoon. V
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the... more Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to be carried out in a more harmonized and consistent manner, this paper makes a proposal for a set of indicators that will enable to address the challenge from a number of different approaches. It proposes a minimum set of basic energetic indicators, and the taxonomy that will allow their communication and reporting. In addition, an extended set of descriptors is outlined which better enables the application of more novel approaches to the evaluation of the effect of this new soundscape on people’s subjective perception.
Presently, large cities have significant problems with noise pollution due to human activity. Tra... more Presently, large cities have significant problems with noise pollution due to human activity. Transportation, economic activities, and leisure activities have an important impact on noise pollution. Acoustic noise monitoring must be done with equipment of high quality. Thus, long-term noise monitoring is a high-cost activity for administrations. For this reason, new alternative technological solutions are being used to reduce the costs of measurement instruments. This article presents a design for a versatile electronic device to measure outdoor noise. This device has been designed according to the technical standards for this type of instrument, which impose strict requirements on both the design and the quality of the device’s measurements. This instrument has been designed under the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) concept, so the microphone–electronics set can be used as a sensor that can be connected to any microprocessor-based device, and therefore can be easily attached ...
The surface condition of roadways has direct consequences on a wide range of processes related to... more The surface condition of roadways has direct consequences on a wide range of processes related to the transportation technology, quality of road facilities, road safety, and traffic noise emissions. Methods developed for detection of road surface condition are crucial for maintenance and rehabilitation plans, also relevant for driving environment detection for autonomous transportation systems and e-mobility solutions. In this paper, the clustering of the tire-road noise emission features is proposed to detect the condition of the wheel tracks regions during naturalistic driving events. This acoustic-based methodology was applied in urban areas under nonstop real-life traffic conditions. Using the proposed method, it was possible to identify at least two groups of surface status on the inspected routes over the wheel-path interaction zone. The detection rate on urban zone reaches 75% for renewed lanes and 72% for distressed lanes.
It seems obvious that the noise levels in local communities surrounding airports influences the l... more It seems obvious that the noise levels in local communities surrounding airports influences the level of acceptance of an airport. What is not so evident is the effect of nonacoustic factors that increase the societal rejection, like the lack of sensitivity and empathy from the authorities and airport managers, the lack of trust in them, the lack of information and transparency, the perception of being excluded from the decision making and so on. Complementary to the traditional strategies based on the reduction of noise exposure, a community engagement and involvement approach brings new possibilities to manage noise around airports, trying to exploit the non-acoustic factors that have negatively affected the community response. Building trust among the stakeholders is a key factor in this strategy, and it must be based on a long-term, honest, and transparent two-way communication. In the last decade, the huge growth of the information and communication technologies has opened new opportunities that the aviation organizations and stakeholders are starting to explore in depth trying to reduce the degree of rejection of the airport, which may compromise the utilization of existing and future infrastructure. In this review, we make a short introduction on aircraft noise health effects, to focus annoyance and the influence that non-acoustic factors on it. Then, we describe the basis of community engagement as a parallel approach to mitigate noise issues around airports, setting the focus on the noise metrics and the involvement techniques that must be implemented to engage the community.
Although pattern recognition technique has been largely used in many fields, it seems that very f... more Although pattern recognition technique has been largely used in many fields, it seems that very few studies have applied this technique to cooking processes. In this preliminary research, a new methodology has been developed and tested on a simple case of water boiling. Besides defining and analysing the efficacy and the performance of a statistical pattern recognition approach when applied to different signals (sound and vibration), an optimisation module has been proposed to boost the classification rates by adding syntactical analysis that enables to consider the inertia of the process. In the specific case of boiling water, almost 100% successful recognition has been reached. These results prove the validity of this methodology, opening new research lines for new scenarios such as different cooking process, acoustically polluted environments, sensors optimisation, etc.
The increasing importance of pollutant noise has led to the creation of many new noise testing la... more The increasing importance of pollutant noise has led to the creation of many new noise testing laboratories in recent years. For this reason and due to the legal implications that noise reporting may have, it is necessary to create procedures intended to guarantee the quality of the testing and its results. For instance, the ISO/IEC standard 17025:2005 specifies general requirements for the competence of testing laboratories. In this standard, interlaboratory comparisons are one of the main measures that must be applied to guarantee the quality of laboratories when applying specific methodologies for testing. In the specific case of environmental noise, round robin tests are usually difficult to design, as it is difficult to find scenarios that can be available and controlled while the participants carry out the measurements. Monitoring and controlling the factors that can influence the measurements (source emissions, propagation, background noise…) is not usually affordable, so the most extended solution is to create very effortless scenarios, where most of the factors that can have an influence on the results are excluded (sampling, processing of results, background noise, source detec-tion…) The new approach described in this paper only requires the organizer to make actual measurements (or prepare virtual ones). Applying and interpreting a common reference document (standard, regulation…), the participants must analyze these input data independently to provide the results, which will be compared among the participants. The measurement costs are severely reduced for the participants, there is no need to monitor the scenario conditions, and almost any relevant factor can be included in this methodology.
El ruido ha sido un problema desde épocas inmemoriales. Actualmente, el desarrollo industrial, as... more El ruido ha sido un problema desde épocas inmemoriales. Actualmente, el desarrollo industrial, así como la creciente demanda de transporte y ocio, contribuyen a una potenciación del problema en una sociedad en la que los aspectos sanitarios y de protección medioambiental cada vez tienen mayor importancia.
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment
This article presents a method of calculation that allows us to separate the contribution of a sp... more This article presents a method of calculation that allows us to separate the contribution of a specific vehicle to the overall noise pollution in an urban environment. This method will provide local authorities with new operating models so that the cost of noise can be allocated to a vehicle according to factors such as the number of people it affects, the distance traveled and journey time, the driving style and the type of vehicle and tires. The proposed methodology can be adapted to different noise emission and propagation models, and we select as a basis the CNOSSOS-EU framework for compatibility with the European noise mapping strategy. This method will make it possible to reduce road traffic noise using two long-term strategies: (a) separate distributions of the costs of noise among the vehicles that generate it, with the aim of achieving (b) an increase in pro-environmental behavior with regard to this pollutant.
This paper describes a method for the automatic identification of acoustic events using a weighte... more This paper describes a method for the automatic identification of acoustic events using a weighted average of sound pressure and sound intensity measured at the vicinity of airports. The classification is based on the combination of different parameters using a technique conceptually similar to the sensor fusion: the indications of different classifiers are merged using the classification uncertainty as a figure of merit. The method uses the results of a training phase for the observation of statistical distributions of sound pressure and sound intensity related parameters. The different parameters' weights are computed analyzing the overlap of probability distributions of takeoffs and landings, so that more relevance is given to the quantities presenting a low risk of misclassification. The proposed method does not require any arbitrary assumption about the parameter effectiveness, given that the indications of multiple (potentially infinite) classifiers can be merged together with weights that minimize the chance of misclassification. The method has been validated with measurements performed at the Milan Malpensa airport (Italy). Results outlined that the proposed classification criterion correctly identifies approximately 99% of events.
Purpose of Review This review aims to analyze the effects of the pandemic on the world's sound en... more Purpose of Review This review aims to analyze the effects of the pandemic on the world's sound environment. Recent Findings The confinements associated with the pandemic led to a reduction in sound levels worldwide and a change in the perception of soundscapes in the absence of traffic noise and human-generated noise. Summary In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries and regions around the world adopted a series of interventions in 2020 that have been referred to as "lockdown" or "confinement." These sets of restrictions had a clear and obvious consequence derived from the absence of people in the streets and the reduction of daily activity and commuting, which caused an unprecedented silencing on a large scale. Along with the silence that ensued, the pandemic and the confinements affected acoustics and our relationship with sounds on different scales. In the cities, this phenomenon had a strong reduction in acoustic intensity due to the absence of vehicles on the streets. Perhaps this was more perceptible in our neighborhoods, with notable changes in their soundscapes, first due to the absence of people in the streets and later due to more outdoor activity derived from the fear of the spread of the virus in indoor spaces. The longer periods of time spent in our homes during the lockdowns also highlighted the importance of sound insulation in buildings and the acoustic conditioning of our schools or homes.
The influence of applying European default values to the making of a noise map was evaluated in a... more The influence of applying European default values to the making of a noise map was evaluated in a typical environment like Palma de Mallorca. These default values were compared with measured noise levels and the model was validated or rejected according to the deviations. After an unacceptable initial result, quantification of improvements to the process has been performed. This analysis demonstrates that the use of noise source default data in the absence of specific data can generate deviations in excess of more than 9 dB. Consequently, additional data gathered were of higher quality and were collected using different techniques. Different methodologies were also examined for collecting model input data that would be of the highest possible quality, by analysing the improvement generated in the reduction in the uncertainty of the final result of the noise map. Improvements to the process consisted of a developing a new traffic network with current data, obtaining more experimental...
The lockdown that Madrid has suffered during the months of March to June 2020 to try to control a... more The lockdown that Madrid has suffered during the months of March to June 2020 to try to control and minimize the spread of COVID-19 has significantly altered the acoustic environment of the city. The absence of vehicles and people on the streets has led to a noise reduction captured by the monitoring network of the City of Madrid. In this article, an analysis has been carried out to describe the reduction in noise pollution that has occurred and to analyze the changes in the temporal patterns of noise, which are strongly correlated with the adaptation of the population's activity and behavior to the new circumstances. The reduction in the sound level ranged from 4 to 6 dBA for the indicators L d , L e , and L n , and this is connected to a significant variation in the daily time patterns, especially during weekends, when the activity started earlier in the morning and lasted longer at midday, decreasing significantly in the afternoon. V
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the... more Many countries around the world have chosen lockdown and restrictions on people’s mobility as the main strategies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. These actions have significantly affected environmental noise and modified urban soundscapes, opening up an unprecedented opportunity for research in the field. In order to enable these investigations to be carried out in a more harmonized and consistent manner, this paper makes a proposal for a set of indicators that will enable to address the challenge from a number of different approaches. It proposes a minimum set of basic energetic indicators, and the taxonomy that will allow their communication and reporting. In addition, an extended set of descriptors is outlined which better enables the application of more novel approaches to the evaluation of the effect of this new soundscape on people’s subjective perception.
Presently, large cities have significant problems with noise pollution due to human activity. Tra... more Presently, large cities have significant problems with noise pollution due to human activity. Transportation, economic activities, and leisure activities have an important impact on noise pollution. Acoustic noise monitoring must be done with equipment of high quality. Thus, long-term noise monitoring is a high-cost activity for administrations. For this reason, new alternative technological solutions are being used to reduce the costs of measurement instruments. This article presents a design for a versatile electronic device to measure outdoor noise. This device has been designed according to the technical standards for this type of instrument, which impose strict requirements on both the design and the quality of the device’s measurements. This instrument has been designed under the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) concept, so the microphone–electronics set can be used as a sensor that can be connected to any microprocessor-based device, and therefore can be easily attached ...
Noise is an important concern in modern societies affecting the health and wellbeing of citizens.... more Noise is an important concern in modern societies affecting the health and wellbeing of citizens. Beyond the objective physiological effects of noise, noise response has a significant subjective component, which is reflected as a community response and has been traditionally evaluated through surveys. These surveys are often costly, invasive and people do not usually take part in them, whether you use one-to-one interview, phone-based polls or web-based forms. But the big boost of online social networks has demonstrated that some people are willing to share their views and feelings about everyday problems, including noise. Policy makers should pay attention to these new channels, as they can provide insights about community response and provide new ways of measuring subjective modifying factors in a faster and less expensive way. Online Social Networks act like citizen observatories, and their data can be analyzed as a trustworthy source of information, as humans can contextualize situations and discriminate non-important data. The analysis of these human-sensor data could give us the raw material to know the community response to noise in cities, and the citizens' views regarding different aspects of noise, or specific sound sources. It can also provide a descriptor of reactions towards the performance of actions against noise, something essential to engage stakeholders and improve the efficiency of policymaking in the future. An automatic process in which noise opinions on the Internet are gathered, clustered and analyzed, being able to provide a subjective evaluation of any noise source can be conceived. Today this is something feasible, and it would suppose a breakthrough approach to noise assessment in cities. This paper describes possible examples of the potential of this new approach in noise management and the key methodological aspects that should be considered for this aim, such as the processes to follow and the technologies to use.
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Papers by César Asensio