Papers by Massimiliano Masullo
Buildings
A thermohygrometer is an instrument that is able to measure relative humidity and air temperature... more A thermohygrometer is an instrument that is able to measure relative humidity and air temperature, which are two of the fundamental parameters to estimate human thermal comfort. To date, the market offers small and low-cost solutions for this instrument, providing the opportunity to bring electronics closer to the end-user and contributing to the proliferation of a variety of applications and open-source projects. One of the most critical aspects of using low-cost instruments is their measurement reliability. This study aims to determine the measurement performance of seven low-cost thermohygrometers throughout a 10-fold repeatability test in a climatic chamber with air temperatures ranging from about −10 to +40 °C and relative humidity from approximately 0 to 90%. Compared with reference sensors, their measurements show good linear behavior with some exceptions. A sub-dataset of the data collected is then used to calculate two of the most used indoor (PMV) and outdoor (UTCI) comfor...
Tecniacústica 2011: publicación oficial del congreso : 42 Congreso Español de Acústica ; Encuentro Ibérico de Acústica ; EAA European Symposium on Environmental Acoustics and on Buildings Acoustically Sustainable : Cáceres, 26-28 Octubre 2011, 2011, ISBN 978-84-87985-20-1, 2011
Procedia Computer Science, 2022
ABSTRACT The aim of the Auralization process is to create audible sound files from numerical data... more ABSTRACT The aim of the Auralization process is to create audible sound files from numerical data, which can be simulated, measured or synthesised [1]. This process has been used for the simulation of indoor sound since the 1960’s, while, due to the complexity of predicting sound in an outdoor environments, for these contexts, has only recently gained attention of experts. Moreover recently this process is even more frequently used in combination with visual scenarios. Today, even though the computing power and data storage allows a better managing and processing of the information, Outdoor Auralization remains still demanding. In order to reduce the computation load needed for the auralization of outdoor environments, the efforts of experts are oriented to reach a perceptually correct or plausible auralization rather than a physically correct auralization [2]. The concept of plausibility is often referred to as the perceived agreement with the listener’s expectation towards a corresponding real acoustic event [3]. However sound perception can also be influenced by nonauditory factors, among them, vision plays a fundamental role, as research has already demonstrated [4, 5]. Nowadays visual stimuli can be experienced by means of Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) systems, providing to users a fully integrated immersion into the simulated environment. In this study we submitted, to a sample of subjects, pairs of audio-video stimuli with differently spatialized sounds. The aim of the study was to assess if the subjects could detect any auditory difference in a pairwise comparison, depending on the detail of the visual stimuli. The main results are presented and discussed.
La normativa nazionale relativa alle aule scolastiche si basa sul vecchio DM del 18/12/75 [1] nel... more La normativa nazionale relativa alle aule scolastiche si basa sul vecchio DM del 18/12/75 [1] nel quale sono stabiliti i requisiti di accettabilità di questi ambienti. Nel Decreto sono introdotti i valori dei tempi di riverberazione ottimali al variare della volumetria delle aule, oltre che un fattore di ponderazione correzione in frequenza. Questo parametro tuttavia, considerato quale parametro principale per il controllo della qualità della comunicazione all'interno delle aule scolastiche, risulta spesso completamente disatteso. Numerose ...
Landscape and Urban Planning, 2022
Soundscape itself has been recently defined in the ISO 12913 as the “acoustic environment as perc... more Soundscape itself has been recently defined in the ISO 12913 as the “acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context”. As a term derived from landscape, soundscape is the designation of any human-audible sounding environment. Schafer categorized the main themes of a soundscape as keynotes, signals and soundmarks (sounds by which one can identify a place). A wide-frame study that aims to develop an applied soundscape approach for the evaluation, conservation and rehabilitation of acoustical comfort in urban areas (selected in Turkey) documented that there was a direct relationship between the satisfaction from soundmark and the sound environment, and therefore sound environment could be assessed depending on the soundmark. Depending on this, in order to enrich this approach by various field applications, this study was realized to try out the viability of the approach on soundscapes in different cultural urban areas (selected in It...
Rivista Italiana di Acustica, 2016
Negli ultimi anni molte citta hanno adottato o pianificato strategie volte alla riduzione del tra... more Negli ultimi anni molte citta hanno adottato o pianificato strategie volte alla riduzione del traffico veicolare. Quasi tutte le strategie di mitigazione intendono affrontare principalmente i problemi connessi alla qualita dell’aria ed alla sicurezza stradale. Tuttavia, l’implementazione di tali azioni puo influire positivamente sui livelli di rumore nelle aree urbane, che risultano fortemente influenzati dal trasporto su gomma. Il presente articolo intende analizzare gli effetti di diverse azioni di mitigazione del traffico urbano sui livelli di rumore ambientale. A tal fine, e stata effettuata una rassegna delle differenti strategie di gestione del traffico, dopodiche e stata condotta una campagna di misure in due diversi siti, nel Regno Unito ed in Italia, al fine di esaminare i relativi livelli di rumorosita. ------ Recently several cities have implemented or planned policies to reduce vehicles’ traffic. Most of the mitigation strategies mainly aimed to tackle the problems of th...
Noise & Vibration Worldwide, 2021
Previous evidence has shown that exposure to urban noise negatively influences some cognitive abi... more Previous evidence has shown that exposure to urban noise negatively influences some cognitive abilities (i.e. verbal fluency and delayed recall of prose memory) of people in indoor spaces. However, long-standing literature in the cognitive domain has reported that men and women can show different performance on cognitive tasks. Here, we aimed to investigate if and how different patterns of perceived urban noises in indoor environments could affect male and female participants’ cognitive abilities. Ambisonic sound recordings representing scenarios with varying noise patterns (low, medium and high variability) were acquired with an open window at three dwellings in a southern Italian city. As a control condition, the recordings were caught inside a quiet room. While exposed to theses four auditory conditions, participants had to perform cognitive tasks assessing free verbal memory recall, auditory–verbal recognition and working memory. The results show that male and female participant...
Journal of Building Engineering, 2020
This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the ad... more This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
Building and Environment, 2018
This is a repository copy of How do shared-street design and traffic restriction improve urban so... more This is a repository copy of How do shared-street design and traffic restriction improve urban soundscape and human experience?-An online survey with virtual reality.
Masullo, Massimiliano; Iannace, Gino; Basturk, Seckin; Maffei, Luigi; Senese, Vincenzo Paolo; Ruo... more Masullo, Massimiliano; Iannace, Gino; Basturk, Seckin; Maffei, Luigi; Senese, Vincenzo Paolo; Ruotolo, Francesco
Nowadays the involvement of passengers in acoustic discomfort assessment in public transportation... more Nowadays the involvement of passengers in acoustic discomfort assessment in public transportation systems becomes more and more frequent. Two approaches are usually used: onfield and laboratory studies. On-field studies are characterized by direct interviewing passengers during trips. Instead, laboratory studies consist of listening sounds recorded in real transportation systems, sometimes combining it with still or moving images reproduction. The aim of this research is to compare two different noise assessment methods: Audio-only vs Audio+Video. In Audio-only condition participants listened to the sound patterns of metros, whereas in Audio+Video condition participants listened to the same sounds while were fully immersed in virtual metros. Afterwards, they filled out a questionnaire about the sounds they noticed and reported also the degree of their annoyance/pleasantness. The results showed that noise impact on annoyance/pleasantness was modulated by the presence of visual stimuli. This seems to indicate that acoustic discomfort assessment with unimodal technique is inadequate to capture the complexity of sound perception in an ecological way.
Science of The Total Environment, 2013
The Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) technique allows to involve the local community. ► IVR is use... more The Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) technique allows to involve the local community. ► IVR is used to test noise perception of railway noise in the presence of screens. ► Loudness and Annoyance are judged lower for transparent screens than for opaque ones. ► Perception gaps between opaque and transparent screens increase with noise level.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2013
ABSTRACT For decades, quiet and zero emission vehicles have been considered the challenge for res... more ABSTRACT For decades, quiet and zero emission vehicles have been considered the challenge for researchers and for the industry. Today, despite the great results obtained in the fields of air and noise pollution, the electric vehicles (EV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) have raise an important question regarding the pedestrian safety. At the speeds permitted in urban areas (<50 km/h) these vehicles are considerably quieter than the traditional ones powered by gasoline or diesel. Nevertheless the amount of auditory cues associated to the approaching of these vehicles can be reduced. This can determine an increase of the risk of accidents for the pedestrians. Even though the recent studies on this problem are focused, mainly, on the minimum sound levels and on the spectral content of the approaching vehicles, further aspects of the semantic content's change of the event should be considered. In this paper a preliminary investigation on the relationship, and possible incoherence, among the approaching speed of the vehicles, the auditory cues and the semantic content was performed, and results are presented. For the investigation, an immersive virtual reality environment was used.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2013
Preserving the soundscape and geographic extension of quiet areas is a great challenge against th... more Preserving the soundscape and geographic extension of quiet areas is a great challenge against the wide-spreading of environmental noise. The E.U. Environmental Noise Directive underlines the need to preserve quiet areas as a new aim for the management of noise in European countries. At the same time, due to their low population density, rural areas characterized by suitable wind are considered appropriate locations for installing wind farms. However, despite the fact that wind farms are represented as environmentally friendly projects, these plants are often viewed as visual and audible intruders, that spoil the landscape and generate noise. Even though the correlations are still unclear, it is obvious that visual impacts of wind farms could increase due to their size and coherence with respect to the rural/quiet environment. In this paper, by using the Immersive Virtual Reality technique, some visual and acoustical aspects of the impact of a wind farm on a sample of subjects were assessed and analyzed. The subjects were immersed in a virtual scenario that represented a situation of a typical rural outdoor scenario that they experienced at different distances from the wind turbines. The influence of the number and the colour of wind turbines on global, visual and auditory judgment were investigated. The main results
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Papers by Massimiliano Masullo