Evaluating a visual-acoustic simulation for wind park assessment

The implementation of wind parks often fails due to lack of public acceptance. Visual-acoustic landscape simulations of wind parks offer a potential instrument for public participation, allowing experiencing the visual and the acoustic landscape impact. However, before such simulations can be implemented in practice, they need to be validated. In this article, we develop and apply an approach to evaluate visual-acoustic simulations for assessing wind park perceptions. The approach compares whether simulations generate similar reactions of respondents as recordings of the same environments. The survey participants made a visual and an acoustic assessment of the landscape represented by recordings and by simulations. The results show that there was nearly no difference in the rating of the annoyance of wind turbine noise between the recordings and the simulation. With regard to the visual landscape assessment the ratings based on the simulations were lower than the ones based on the recordings. The approach indicates aspects of the simulation that differ compared to the recording, such as coherent coloring and animation of landscape elements. The rating differences between the recordings and the simulations of both, the visual and the acoustic perception have to be considered when using the simulations for further studies. Overall, the described approach was successfully applied and contributes to validity testing methods. However, this is a preliminary and exploratory study. A complete test of validity should compare the simulations to the actual environment, which should be further studied.