Conscious Walk Methodology Design for Acoustic, Air Quality and Biodiversity Evaluation in Urban Environments

Environmental noise and air pollution as well as the poor green infrastructure quality is a major concern for the European population due to its impact of citizens health, especially for those citizens living in urban environments, which is materialized in a rising number of complaints to public administration. This issue is further stressed for urban areas located close to aggressive pollutants such as airports, railways, highways, or leisure areas. To attend this situation from the citizen everyday life, this paper proposes a hybrid methodology of a collective campaign, where citizens, especially from those environments that have a stronger impact on them, and scientists collect high quality acoustic, chemical and biodiversity data. The campaign consists in a conscious walk that considers both the acoustic measurements conducted by experts but also by citizens, as well as air quality measurements and biodiversity descriptions. The final goal of the method is to obtain subjective and objective data coming from soundscape, air quality and biodiversity to evaluate a pre-designed walk in an urban location, in the surroundings of Parc de la Ciutadella, in Barcelona.