Sons al Balcó: A subjective approach to the WASN-based LAeq measured values during the COVID-19 lockdown

The lockdown in Spain due to COVID-19 caused a strong decrease of the urban noise levels observed in most cities, clearly followed in the case that these cities had acoustic sensor networks deployed. This fact had an impact on people's lives, who, at that moment, were mainly locked at home due to health reasons. In this paper, we present a qualitative analysis of the subjective vision of the citizens participating in a data collecting campaign during the COVID-19 lockdown in Girona, a Catalan city, named 'Sons al Balcó'. The alignment of the subjective data gathered - too scarce to conduct to final conclusions - indicate that the objective $LAeq measurements, which showed a clear decrease of noise in the streets during the lockdown, were supported by the fact that new sounds found during the lockdown were not very annoying. Former existing noise sources, as road traffic noise or leisure noise, are depicted as annoying but their decrease during the lockdown improved the soundscape of many homes. This paper goal is to show the possibility of gathering both objective and calibrated data with perceptive approximation supports our conclusions, in a limited - in number of participants - but exceptional survey conducted during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown period in Catalonia.