promote international cooperation within different specific fields of acoustics, provide assistance in organizing EAA events, suggest special issues for Acta Acustica or Acoustics in Practice, initiate studies and prepare documents such as strategies, policy statements, state-of-the-art assessments, reports, etc, within its defined technical field.

EAA TC-RBA WG 1 Working Group on Acoustics in Open-Plan Schools and Offices

This working group formed within TC-RBA proposes to share experience and promote research in the areas of:

  • Measurement and prediction of room acoustic conditions
  • Acoustic design and solutions
  • Effects of school and office noise on humans

The main activity is to arrange structured sessions in congresses. Such sessions have been e.g., in ICA 2007 Madrid, Acoustics2008 Paris, Forum Acusticum 2001 Aalborg, Euronoise 2012 Prague, Euronoise 2018 Crete, ICA 2019 Aachen, Euronoise 2021, and Forum Acusticum 2023. The sessions have grown with time and the popularity can be explained by its interdisciplinary nature.

The topic of WG1 attracts researchers and experts from room acoustic design, environmental and cognitive psychology, occupational health, facility management, and industry providing solutions for noise control.

The room acoustic measurements these spaces are conducted using the following international standards:

  • ISO 3382-1:2009 Acoustics - Measurement of room acoustic parameters. Part 1: Performance spaces.
  • ISO 3382-2:2008 Acoustics - Measurement of room acoustic parameters. Part 2: Reverberation time in ordinary rooms.
  • ISO 3382-3:2022 Acoustics - Measurement of room acoustic parameters. Part 3: Open plan offices

The next opportunity is in Internoise 2024, where Marcos Holtz (Brazil) and Valtteri Hongisto are chairing a technical session “Acoustics in Workspaces”: See: https://internoise2024.org

If you are interested to study this field, the following open access source is recommended:
Proceedings of ICA 2019 at http://pub.dega-akustik.de/ICA2019/data/index.html.
Browse by session title, Choose 20 H - Open plan offices.

For further information and participation contact:

Valtteri Hongisto

Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland

valtteri.hongisto@turkuamk.fi

The European Acoustics Association (EAA) is a non-profit entity established in 1992 that includes in its membership societies predominantly in European countries interested in to promote development and progress of acoustics in its different aspects, its technologies and applications. EAA gathers 33 societies of acoustics and serves more than 9000 individual members all over Europe. The European Acoustics Association (EAA) is an Affiliate Member of the International Commission for Acoustics (ICA) and of Initiative of Science in Europe (ISE).

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