Akustik och säkerhet i inomhusarenor

The background to the study is that within the next ten years about 50 new multi-purposeindoor arenas will be built. These are used for various events such as sports, concerts, etc. In order to achieve a high level of security in the case of danger alarm signals and alarmmessages must be heard well by the visitors. ÅF-Ingemansson wanted to show builders the importance of good speech perception and that it is not observed in arenas today. They conducted technical tests on two large multi purpose indoor arenas to develop parameters that affect speech perception in the arena.To get a subjective view of how these arenas are experienced a survey was created. The questionnaire was used in two surveys at the same venues where the measurements were made. The purpose of the surveys was to complement measurement results and show if the measurement results are consistent with the spectators experience. Comparing the results from the measurements and the questionnaires for each arena some trends could be observed. For example, in sections where the STI values are low the subjective speech perception was also worse compared to other sections. Another example is that visitors who have hearing difficulties, as expected, had more difficulties in understanding warning messages than those without hearing problems. Both the measurements and subjective tests show that speech intelligibility is low. This can lead to serious situations where visitors miss important information in emergency situation