Priorization of acoustic variables: Environmental decision support for the physical characterization of urban sound environments

Environmental noise is a factor with a significant impact on personal well-being. One of the principal challenges of urban planning is the creation of urban spaces capable of providing inhabitants with a high quality of life. Consequently urban spaces must be planned with an acceptable sound level and quality. For this purpose, it is necessary to design a tool capable of accurately characterizing the urban sound environment. This article describes a priorization of acoustic variables, which will ultimately help to make decisions in the characterization of environmental urban noise. This study describes the development of a model to characterize sound environments, in urban agglomerations, which takes into account both temporal and spatial structure. The results obtained point to the influence of the variables related to the evolution of sound pressure on the calculation of the sound pressure level. They also reflect the influence of the sound pressure level corrected by the variability of the sound pressure, as well as the benefits derived from an optimal selection of variables in the characterization of the sound environment.