Sound propagation at micro-scale in urban areas

Whilst large scale noise-mapping techniques have been applied extensively in practice, as required by the EU Directive on environmental noise, they are often not applicable for microscale urban areas such as a street or a square. This talk will discuss a series of simulation techniques as well as related acoustic theories for accurately calculating the sound field for micro-scale urban areas. This includes energy-based image source methods for street canyons and urban squares with geometrically (specularly) reflecting boundaries, image source method considering interference, ray-tracing, radiosity model for diffusely reflecting boundaries, transport theory, equivalent source method, and some other models. Techniques for urban acoustic animation will also be briefly discussed.