Thesis Seckinbasturk

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Scuola di Dottorato in Discipline dell’Architettura

Dottorato di Ricerca in “Rappresentazione, Tutela e Sicurezza dell’Ambiente e delle Strutture”

XXIV Ciclo

Seçkin Baştürk

THE USE OF MULTISENSORY EVALUATION TECHNIQUES IN

SPATIAL DECISION MAKING

SETTORE SCIENTIFICO-DISCIPLINARE ING-IND/11

21 Novembre 2011

COORDINATORE TUTOR

prof. arch. Carmine Gambardella prof. ing. Luigi Maffei

CANDIDATO

arch. Seckin Basturk



THE USE OF MULTISENSORY EVALUATION TECHNIQUES IN SPATIAL DECISION MAKING 1

ABSTRACT

The aim of this research is to demonstrate the necessity and the benefits of the

multisensory evaluation techniques. An innovative approach to assessment of

environments by multisensory evaluation, involving the end users during the

design process and administration is proposed. The multisensory stimulationphenomenon is studied with special emphasis on auditory perception.

The presented assessment methodology has been refined with the feedback of

various successive case studies with its implementation. The whole study

consists of two parts concerning the design of the new approach for assessment

of environments and its application on case studies that defines the potentiality

of it.

The presented assessment methodology is an innovative approach that

considers objective psychological measures as well as subjective measures in

perception and interpretation of the environments. In order to assess

psychological reactions of the end users, an immersive virtual reality system that

must be stimulating the end users feelings and emotions, proposed to be

employed. With the recent developments in IVR hardware and software it is

much easier to come up to a realistic representation of environments that lets

an ecological assessment of environments that takes into account the

multisensory and interdependent nature of human perception. In this context

the core of the thesis deals with the procedures on testing psychological

reactions in laboratory conditions and on the techniques to achieve plausible

depiction of environments.

The evaluation of potentiality of the innovative assessment method is carried

out applying the mentioned method on case studies. The case study applications

consider different scales and characteristics of sonic environments.

Consequently the feedback is obtained to refine the proposed assessment

method and to define necessities for different degrees of multisensory input andcontext.

Keywords: psychological measures, virtual reality, ecological assessment,

environmental noise assessment, multisensory perception, soundscape,

auralization




SOMMARIO

Lo scopo della presente ricerca è dimostrare le potenzialità ed i benefici

dell'applicazione di tecniche di Virtual Reality nella progettazione e

riqualificazione degli spazi urbani ed extraurbani. Questo approccio innovativo

comporta un più ampio coinvolgimento degli utenti finali, chiamati a collaborarecon le amministrazioni già in fase progettuale.

Viene di seguito presentata una metodologia di valutazione multisensoriale

messa a punto e verificata attraverso l'applicazione a diversi casi studio in

ambito urbano (spazi aperti e chiusi) ed extra urbano nel complesso. La ricerca

consta di due parti riguardanti la messa a punto del nuovo approccio per la

valutazione complessiva dell'ambiente e la verifica delle potenzialità attraverso

l'applicazione a casi studio.

Tale metodologia di valutazione è basata su misure psicologiche sia oggettive

che soggettive della percezione ed interpretazione degli ambienti. Allo scopo di

valutare le reazioni psicologiche degli utenti, è stato proposto un sistema di

Realtà Virtuale Immersiva capace di stimolare le emozioni dei soggetti,

sottoposti a diversi stimoli sensoriali con maggior enfasi a quello uditivo.

Grazie ai recenti sviluppi nella tecnologia della realtà virtuale (hardware e

software) è molto più facile ottenere una rappresentazione realistica degli

ambienti e delle loro componenti che ne consenta una valutazione complessiva

che tenga conto della natura multisensoriale ed interdipendente della

percezione umana. Pertanto il presente lavoro dedica un ampio spazio alle

procedure per la valutazione delle reazioni psicologiche soggettive in laboratorio

e le tecniche per realizzare ambienti sonori il più possibile realistici.

Parole chiave: misure psicologiche, realtà virtuale, valutazione ambientale,

valutazione del rumore ambientale, percezione multisensoriale, paesaggiosonoro, ruralizzazione.




TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 1

Table of Contents 3

List of Publications 5

1. Introduction 7

1.1. Aims of the Thesis 10

1.2. Outline of the Thesis 11

2. Review of the Literature 12

2.1. Environmental Psychology and Perception 12

2.1.1. Multisensory Perception 142.1.2. Auditory Perception and Audiovisual Interactions 16

2.1.3. Influence of Mood and Noise Sensitivity on 19

Sound Perception

2.2. Virtual Reality Environments 22

2.2.1. Multisensory Stimulation with Immersive VR 25

2.2.2. Auditory Representation and Auralization 27

2.3. Recent Multisensory Assessment Techniques in 30

Sound Related Studies

2.3.1. Environmental Noise Studies 302.3.2. Soundscape and Sound Quality Studies 34

3. The Design of Multisensory Assessment Method 37

3.1. Virtual Environment Design 37

3.1.1. Audio Stimuli Design for VR Application 37

3.1.2. Visual Stimuli Design for VR Application 43

3.2. Virtual Reality Immersion 46

3.2.1. VR Software 46

3.2.2. VR Hardware 49

3.3. Psychological Assessment Process Design 53

3.3.1. Assessment Measures 54

3.3.2. Assessment Procedure 65

3.3.3. Data Analyses 66




4. Application of Multisensory Assessment Method on 68

Case Studies

4.1. Environmental Noise Studies 68

4.1.1. Road Traffic Noise Assessment 68

4.1.2. Wind Turbine Noise Assessment 734.2. Urban Soundscape Studies 82

4.2.1. Urban Renewal Projects Assessment 82

4.2.2. Public Participation Support in

Urban Administration Processes 83

4.3. Room Acoustics Studies 86

4.3.1. Adaptive Reuse Projects Assessment 86

4.3.2. Acoustical Improvement Projects Assessment 90

4.4. Discussion and Future Directions 94

5. Conclusions 96

6. Bibliography 98




LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

This thesis summarizes the following articles and publications, referred to as P1-P14:

P1_ S. BASTURK, L. MAFFEI, F. PEREA PÉREZ, , Á. RANEA PALMA,

“Multisensory evaluation to support urban decision making”, in

International Seminar on Virtual Acoustics – ISVA 2011, Valencia, Spain,

November 2011.

P2_ L. MAFFEI, M. MASULLO, S. BASTURK, “Potentialities of the immersive

virtual reality in environmental noise annoyance studies”, in

TecniAcustica 2011, Cáceres, Spain, October 2011.

P3_ S. BASTURK, Á. RANEA PALMA, F. PEREA PÉREZ, L. MAFFEI, “Análisis

multisensorial de la contaminación acústica en espacios urbanos”, in

TecniAcustica 2011, Cáceres, Spain, October 2011.

P4_ L. MAFFEI, N. ALEXEEVA, M. DI GABRIELE, M. MASULLO, S. BASTURK, F.

ALETTA, “Experiences on acoustic impact assessment by means of

immersive virtual reality”, in ELPIT 2011, Togliatti, Russia, September

2011.

P5_ L. MAFFEI, T. IACHINI, S. BASTURK, M. DI GABRIELE, V.P. SENESE,

“Soundscape approach for the impact assessment of wind farms”, in

Inter-Noise 2011, Osaka, Japan, September 2011.

P6_ L. MAFFEI, M. DI GABRIELE, S. BASTURK, “Multisensorial approach for the

functional conversion of monumental spaces in auditoria”, in IXInternational Forum Le Vie dei Mercanti, Capri/Naples, Italy, 9 - 11 June

2011.

P7_ M. DI GABRIELE, L. MAFFEI, S. BASTURK, M. MASULLO, “Le tecniche di

multisensorial virtual reality a supporto delle valutazioni di impatto

acustico”, in 38th AIA National Congress, Rimini, Italy, 8-10 June 2011.

P8_ L. MAFFEI, S. BASTURK, F. ALETTA, “Valutazione di interventi di

riqualificazione acustica di ambienti scolastici mediante l’applicazione




delle tecniche della realtà virtuale”, in 38th AIA National Congress,

Rimini, Italy, 8-10 June 2011.

P9_ M. MASULLO, G. IANNACE, S. BASTURK, L. MAFFEI, V.P. SENESE, F.

RUOTOLO, “The influence of vision on noise annoyance evaluation of wind farms”, in Fourth International Meeting on Wind Turbine Noise,

Rome, Italy, 12-14 April 2011.

P10_ S. BASTURK, R. CARAFA, L. MAFFEI, “The Validation of Architectural and

Acoustic Projects to Transform Ecclesiastical Architecture in Auditoria for

Concert Music”, in 1st EAA-EuroRegio 2010, Ljubljana, Slovenia,

September 2010.

P11_ F. RUOTOLO, S. IACHINI, L. MAFFEI, S. BASTURK, M. DI GABRIELE,“Subjective and objective psychological measures of environmental noise

assessment”, in 1st EAA-EuroRegio 2010, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September

2010.

P12_ F. PEREA PÉREZ, S. BASTURK, M. MASULLO, R. HERNANDEZ, “A Tool for

Environmental Auralization of Stationary Sound Sources”, in 1st EAA -

EuroRegio 2010, Ljubljana, Slovenia, September 2010.

P13_ L. MAFFEI, M. MASULLO, S. BASTURK, “New Tools for the NoiseAnnoyance Assessment of Projects”, in 2nd UNTREF International

Congress on Acoustics, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 2010.

P14_ L. MAFFEI, S. IACHINI, M. DI GABRIELE, S. BASTURK, G. RUGGERO, “New

Audio-Visual Approach For Environmental Noise Assessment”, in Inter-

Noise 2010, pp. 252, Lisbon, Portugal, July 2010.




1. INTRODUCTION

As space and spatial issues became the new paradigm of architectural theory

at the end of the twentieth century, all disciplines are getting more involved

with space, architecture or engineering has no more right to it than any

other. Space which is conceptual as well as physical, an embodiment of socialrelations and ideology, holds the person within. And spatial studies, within

and in-between different disciplines, focus on relationships between people

and their environments in order to promote spaces in line with the nature of

these relationships.

In recent decades the full spectrum of human experiences is being

considered a wide variety of fields; the design of consumer goods, marketing

and the design of private and virtual spaces amongst others. The reason for

this interest is demonstrated in several recent studies which reveal the

significant impact that spatial cues have on individuals’ behavior and can be

consequently employed to increase retail performance, inform successful

spatial designs and improve quality of life. Especially the places which are

subject to purchase of goods and services are increasingly being conceived

with their sensual characteristics. And multisensory design is getting much

more important to enhance interaction and to intensify the sensorial

experiences of people, related to the goods, services, spaces. Colors, lights,

tactile properties of materials, temperature, humidity, odors, and sounds are

increasingly considered with their physical properties, semantics and the way

that they are perceived.

Notwithstanding, still, sensory qualities are not considered enough in urban

spaces. As Mirko Zardini has pointed out, sanitization and standardization are

still very dominant movements for urban and environment related issues

(Zardini, Schivelbusch, and Centre canadien d’architecture 2005). As

sanitization and standardization deal with “basic” needs of a “generic”

person, the sensory qualities are being thought of as just physical quantitiesthat are subject to control and elimination. This approach, not being context-

aware, excludes differences and interactions between people, communities,

cultures, life styles, expectations and senses, likewise the conventional sound

related studies.

Environmental sounds are traditionally assumed as ‘waste’ to reduce or

eliminate. This assent has raised sanitization and standardization in this field.

The sanitization is accepted to be the objective of noise control engineering

and standardization is used as a tool to develop dose-response relationships.

http://tureng.com/search/purchase%20of%20goods%20and%20services

http://tureng.com/search/purchase%20of%20goods%20and%20services




Large social surveys carried out to investigate these relationships, in this way

the people’s subjective response to the noise could be predicted as a

function of certain physical characteristics of environmental noise (Schultz

1978). Data from social surveys, concerning different types of transportation

noise, led to development of a set of dose response curves. These dose-response curves are widely accepted by experts and took place in national

and international legislative efforts.

In European Union, the results of these studies provide the basis of the

European Noise Directive 2002/49/EC (European Parliament, Council 2002) in

which noise indicators Lden (day-evening-night equivalent level) and

Lnight (night equivalent level) were introduced. These indicators which are

derived from energetic levels of noise are supposed to be used to

understand, respectively, noise annoyance and sleep disturbance. The noiseannoyance is widely accepted to be the most important and best estimate of

the overall effect of environmental noise pollution as well as the sleep

disturbance (Miedema and Vos 1998) (Miedema and Oudshoorn 2001).

Furthermore, dose-effect relations were introduced in order to guide

assessing annoyance using the Lden and assessing sleep disturbance using

Lnight metrics (European Commission, WG2 – Dose/Effect 2002) (European

Commission, WG-Health and Socio-Economic Aspects 2004). With these

legislative and guiding efforts it is intended to estimate long-term and large-

scale effects of environmental noise on population and implement noisecontrol measures where it is needed.

Nevertheless, noise annoyance is a multi-faceted concept where the

psychosocial factors play role as well as the noise level (Maffei, Masullo, and

Basturk 2010). A statistically generalized noise indicator can mislead the

noise impact assessment when it is applied to different contexts, like

different cultures, life styles, expectations of population, etc. (Maris 2008). A

few recent studies shown the evidence that at different scales and contexts

the dose-effect curves and public reaction can vary therefore applying

generalized measures may cause impotent noise control actions (Lercher and

Botteldooren 2006)(Maffei et al. 2010). Also recent studies have shown that

the annoyance from aircraft noise has changed over past years (Guski

2004)(Brink et al. 2008) which lead up to questioning the stability of these

generalized approaches over time.

When examined it can be easily seen that these variations are strongly

related to how individuals perceive their surroundings. Throughout our daily




life environmental stimuli are continuously being sensed, sensations recall

our memories and previous experiences, and in turn trigger processing that

leads to the identification and recognition of our surrounding environment.

This process informs an individual’s response which occurs as a function of

the context in which the environmental stimuli are sensed. In other words,we perceive noise not just with our auditory system but with interplay of all

our senses to constitute a unique overall perception (Meredith 2002). There

are recent studies showing the evidence that there is a significant

cooperation between sensory modalities evaluating noise exposure (Fastl

2004)(Guillén and López Barrio 2007)(Haverkamp 2007).

Public information and consultancy is one of the most important underlying

principles of environmental policy of European Union. On this basis the

necessity to ensure public information and get public consultancy in thebeginning stages of the decision-making are mentioned in noise related

regulations, but no definition of the population involvement process were

specified. Noise maps and numerical data seem to be the tools pointed by

the legislation for the public information. However explaining noise which is a

conceptual phenomenon, with numerical noise data makes it less

comprehensible by general public.

In order to overcome these issues in noise impact assessment process,

recently, several researchers worked on new methods employing high endtechnology in laboratory conditions and focused on new user friendly

interfaces to present noise information and assessment of their reactions to

it. Conducting new extensive social surveys can give more realistic results

because they take place in real life settings. However they are expensive,

time-consuming and not applicable to assess future scenarios (new projects).

On the other hand laboratory experiments are relatively cheap, with a

specific aim they enable fast results and they are applicable to assess future

scenarios.

The laboratory settings can be prepared in two ways; preparing a physical

stage that represents real life which can be named as simulator, or preparing

a virtual stage (virtual environment) in order to display the scenario through

a computer interface. These laboratory tests should stimulate the listeners’

feelings and emotions (such as pleasantness, excitement, contentment) in

order to have realistic reactions to the sonic simulated environment. In other

words by these methods the sound and the complex environment are

experienced together (Otto et al. 1999).




Simulators usually offer more realistic experiments but they are expensive

and generally suitable to represent indoor conditions like living room or a

vehicle cabin (De Coensel et al. 2007)(Genuit and Bray 2001). On the other

hand, virtual stages are relatively cheap and fully customizable for any kind of

experimental need. There are several efforts in order to enhanceconventional laboratory listening tests and achieve a satisfactory virtual stage

(Hynninen 2001)(01dB-Metravib 2011)(Brüel & Kjær Sound & Vibration

Measurement A/S 2011)(HEAD acoustics GmbH 2011), however they offer

limited interaction with environment and usually limited immersion with only

a static representation (images/photos) of the environment. Besides, high-

end immersive virtual reality (IVR) systems offer satisfactory realism through

high quality display and high level of interaction. The potentiality of various

types of virtual reality systems in acoustics related studies is under study.

Virtual reality systems can be utilized for dissemination of the results of noisemaps (McDonald, Rice, and Dobbyn 2009), soundscape design and urban

planning (Brambilla et al. 2009)(Fiebig and Genuit 2009)(Drettakis et al.

2007)(Jallouli, Moreau, and Querrec 2008)(Curcuruto et al. 2010).

1.1. Aims of the Thesis

The aim of this thesis is to describe the design of an innovative multisensory

(acoustic and visual) assessment system and demonstrate the necessity and

the benefits of the multisensory evaluation techniques through case studies.

The realized system involves the end users during the design process and

administration of spatial issues in order to assess the perceived qualities of

the space.

Figure 1.1: Research areas and problems involved in this thesis study.




The multisensory stimulation phenomenon is studied with special emphasis

on auditory perception and audio-video stimuli design, virtual reality

reproduction and the psychological assessment procedure design constitute

the proposed multisensory assessment system.

1.2. Outline of the Thesis

This thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the

research and literature related to environmental perception, approaches in

sound related studies and virtual reality systems. In Chapter 3, the

implemented multisensory assessment system is presented and details of the

stimulus design, virtual reality instrumentation and psychological assessment

procedure are explained. Chapter 4 presents the implementation of the

proposed multisensory assessment method to case studies. Finally, Chapter 5

concludes the thesis.

Thesis Seckinbasturk

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