The International Soundscape Database: An integrated multimedia database of urban soundscape surveys -- questionnaires with acoustical and contextual information

The International Soundscape Database contains the results of a series of soundscape assessment campaigns carried out across Europe. The data collection process was conducted according to the SSID Protocol [1] which integrates in situ questionnaires about users' soundscape experience, with binaural recordings, sound level meter readings, and 360 degree video. The core of this database are individual soundscape questionnaires collected for 1,500+ participants completed in situ in cities across Europe, and the psychoacoustic analysis of 30s binaural recordings which can be matched up to each questionnaire.

The SSID Protocol was based on the ISO 12913 standard for soundscape data collection [2]. For more information on the specifics of how this data is collected, please see [1].

It is the intention that this dataset be added to and augmented with new locations, cities, and contexts in the future. This will be done both by the SSID team at University College London, but we also strongly welcome contributions from other researchers and practicioners. If a soundscape assessment is collected according to the SSID Protocol, it can be integrated with the rest of the database to form a large, cohesive, and ever-growing database of soundscape assessments. 

This dataset incorporates surveys taken in multiple urban public spaces across several cities in Europe. These urban spaces include places like parks, urban squares, green spaces, and market streets. At each location, up to 100 questionnaires were collected over a series of multi-hour long sessions. Therefore the data is organised by LocationID, then SessionID, then GroupID.

The excel file organises the data according to the labels given above. In addition a table with photos and descriptions of each of the locations is provided. Finally, the database excel file is formatted with a row for each individual participant's questionnaire response, then includes the psychoacoustic analysis of the 30s binaural recording taken while the participant was completing the questionnaire. Details about the psychoacoustic analyses is given in the 'Acoustic Settings' tab in the database file.

V0.2 Note: Version 0 is an early version of this dataset to be published with [3]. As this is intended as a pre-release dataset, it includes only the locations given in [3] (i.e. 13 locations in London and Venice) and the psychoacoustic analysis of the binaural recordings, but not the recordings themselves. In the near future, this will be updated to V1.0, which will include more cities in Europe and will include the binaural recordings themselves.

[1] Mitchell A, Oberman T, Aletta F, Erfanian M, Kachlicka M, Lionello M, Kang J. The Soundscape Indices (SSID) Protocol: A Method for Urban Soundscape Surveys—Questionnaires with Acoustical and Contextual Information. Applied Sciences. 2020; 10(7):2397. https://doi.org/10.3390/app10072397 

[2] ISO/TS 12913-2:2018 (2018). “Acoustics – Soundscape – Part 2: Data collection and reporting requirements” International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2018

[3] Mitchell A, Oberman T, Aletta F, Kachlicka M, Lionello M, Erfanian M, Kang J. Investigating Urban Soundscapes of the COVID-19 Lockdown: A predictive soundscape modeling approach. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2021.