SONORUS Project: Classification of historic urban areas through multisensory perception and expectation

The present research project has been intended to show new approaches to the assessment of the environmental quality in general and the soundscape quality in particular of the urban waterfronts. Within this framework, the research deepens on the complete multisensory process of perception, focusing on acoustic aspects and on the influence of context and expectation on the reaction of the individuals towards sensorial stimuli. The research study explores diverse methods with which to evaluate the soundscape of urban open spaces, making different contributions to the identification of the patterns that define its identity. The evaluation of the potentiality of these methods is carried out applying them to case studies in Naples and Brighton. The case study applications consider the spatiotemporal variability of the sonic environment and its characteristics. Consequently the outcomes obtained are used to refine the proposed assessment methods or to evaluate its applicability. Different methods, as variables selection methods, traditional regression methods, or artificial neural networks, were used to evaluate objective as well as subjective measures in the perception and interpretation of the urban environments