Conscious walk assessment for the joint evaluation of the soundscape, air quality, biodiversity, and comfort in Barcelona

Abstract

High environmental noise as well as poor biodiversity and air pollution pose significant challenges for the European population, particularly those residing in urban areas, impacting clearly on citizens’ health. The Conscious Walk initiative stands for an innovative hybrid approach to analyse citizens’ perception of their environment. Being a citizen science participative project, Conscious Walks involves both citizens and scientists collecting high-quality acoustic, chemical, biodiversity, and comfort data while walking in pre-analysed urban environments. The main objective of this proposal is to obtain comprehensive data encompassing both subjective and objective aspects related to soundscape, air quality, biodiversity, and urban comfort. All these elements are closely tied to the overall acoustic environmental quality of the places under study. The effectiveness of this methodology has been tested in various locations in Catalonia, including Sabadell and Barcelona. This contribution focuses on the evaluation of the soundscape in the urban centre of Barcelona, with a comprehensive analysis that integrates data collected by both citizens and scientists during Conscious Walks, air quality metrics, biodiversity, and human comfort information.

Keywords

• acoustic pollution
• air pollution
• urban biodiversity
• human comfort
• citizen science
• sensors
• soundwalk