Robert J. Pheasant

Measurement and Subjective Assessment of Water Generated Sounds

There is increasing concern with protecting quiet and tranquil areas from intrusive noise. Noise reduction at source and barriers to transmission are mitigation measures often considered. An alternative is to attempt to mask or distract attention away from the noise source. The masking or distracting sound source should be pleasant so that it does not add to any irritation caused by the noise source alone. The laboratory measurements described in this paper consisted of capturing under controlled conditions the third octave band spectra of water falling onto water, gravel, bricks and small boulders and various combinations. These spectra were then matched with typical traffic noise spectra to assess the degree of masking that could be expected for each option. Recordings were also taken during each measurement and these were used later to enable the subjective assessment of the tranquillity of the sounds. It was found that there were differences between water sounds both in terms of masking and their subjective impact on tranquillity.

Tranquillity and soundscapes in urban green spaces—predicted and actual assessments from a questionnaire survey

A previous pilot study demonstrated the utility of a tranquillity prediction tool TRAPT for use in three green open spaces in a densely populated area. This allows the calculation of perceived levels of tranquillity in open spaces. The current study expands the range of sites to eight and, importantly, considers the views of visitors to these spaces. In total 252 face-to-face interviews were conducted in these spaces. An important aim of the survey was to determine the extent to which reported tranquillity obtained from the questionnaire survey could be predicted by a previously developed prediction tool TRAPT. A further aim was to determine what other factors may need to be considered in addition to the purely physical descriptors in TRAPT. The questions included the sounds and sights that were noticed, factors affecting tranquillity, as well as questions related to the benefits of visiting these areas. Predictions were considered satisfactory and could be improved further by taking account of issues surrounding personal safety. Examining the trends in these data, it was also shown that the percentage of people feeling more relaxed after visiting the spaces was closely related to overall assessments of perceived tranquillity. Further trends and their implications are presented and discussed.

A new tranquility rating tool and the role of audio and visual interactions.

Restorative environments which enable individuals to recover the sense of well‐being are becoming increasingly important. These environments are characterized by an enhanced level of tranquility. Therefore, obtaining the optimum balance between the landscape and soundscape characteristics and measuring the resultant tranquility of these spaces are essential for their design and maintenance. In order to understand the key factors which affect the tranquillity construct, a large volume of audio and visual data has been collected across a representative range of landscapes in the UK. These data have been analyzed objectively by studying the temporal and spectral characteristics of the recorded sounds and the proportion of the natural and contextual features present in the video clips. The tranquility rating of these landscapes has been obtained from subjective experiments on 44 subjects to whom uni‐ and bimodal stimuli have been presented in a separate experiment. The results of these experiments make possib...

Examining factors contributing to tranquillity in the Scottish Highlands and Dartmoor National Park

The opportunity to experience tranquillity is what makes the countryside so different from cities for many visitors, and in a survey conducted by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [1], 58% of people questioned stated that for them tranquillity was the most positive feature of the countryside. It is therefore not surprising that within the UK Government’s Rural White Paper [2] that tranquillity features as an important element and the UK has recently recognized the importance of protecting tranquil spaces in the National Planning Policy Framework [3]. Previous studies into modelling tranquil space [4,5] led to the development of the following Tranquillity Rating Prediction Tool (TRAPT), which can be used to predict the Tranquillity Rating (TR) of both urban and natural environments. It is important because for the first time it is possible to quantify the importance of natural features in the visual scene and of man-made noise. A practical formulation of the relationship for rural landscapes: