Re: Audibility of fire alarms

[Brad Ingrao <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you very much for this Guillaume.

Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: Guillaume Lemaitre [mailto:lemaitre@ircam.fr]
Sent: Monday, September 20, 2004 8:33 AM
To: info@bradingrao.com
Cc: AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject: Re: Audibility of fire alarms

Dear Brad,
 I recently had to deal with the problem of warning signals and particularly
seek to map acoustic parameters and warning messages. This not quite exactly
the topic you are adressing but I give in the atteched file (sorry, part of
it is in french) some references related to warning signals design.
Roughly speaking, there are 4 main approaches:
* Acoustical approach (ref. [18]): The acoustical signal has to reach a
given acoustical level everywhere it has to be heard
* Psycho-acoustical approach (ref. [2] [5] [9]): The audiblity threshold of
the warning signals have to very low, for the typical background noise in
which they are used.
* Urgency approach (ref. [7] [15] [16] [27]): The urgency feeling conveyed
by the signals have to match the urgency of the situation
* Cognitive and semiotic approach (ref. [1] [3] [6] [12] [13]): The signal
does not only convey an alarm but a warning message, which has to tell the
listener what's happening precisely.
I hope this can be useful for you,
 Regards Guillaume

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Guillaume Lemaitre, Ph.D.
Post-doctoral fellow
Project-team REVES (REndering and Virtual Environments with Sounds)
INRIA Sophia-Antipolis                 tel: (+33) (0)4 92 38 50 83
2004 route des Lucioles               fax: (+33) (0)4 92 38 50 30
BP 93, F-06902 Sophia-Antipolis
Guillaume.Lemaitre@sophia.inria.fr,
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