What is a soundscape intervention?

The term “soundscape”, as it has been established in the area of acoustic ecology, characterizes an “acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and/or understood by a person or people, in context”.¹ A soundscape intervention is a site-specific design to preserve or improve a soundscape. There is a broad variety of interventions conceivable to design soundscapes, ranging from micro-scale actions in specific locations like a park, to interventions on a large scale, referring to a whole city quarter. Soundscape interventions are related among other things to a reduction of unwanted noise, to the introduction of pleasant sounds for masking purposes or to the preservation of soundmarks that embody a local identity.

What makes a soundscape intervention unique from a noise control perspective is that it goes beyond reducing noise levels, to instead promoting or improving the quality of a soundscape as a whole. At the end, a combination of different types of soundscape interventions are frequently applied to achieve a significant impact on residents and soundscape visitors.

^{1 ISO 12913-1:2014}