On the perception of urgency in audition: sound design of an early warning alarm

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems play a critical role in providing advance notice to potentially affected regions, enabling individuals and communities to take immediate safety actions. The efficacy of EEW alarms greatly depends on the timely perception of urgency by the recipients. This paper presents a possible early warning infrastructure which also takes into account the possibility of adapting the alarm to the sensed soundscape in order to define a trade-off between an alarm's urgency and its tolerability in residential and public spaces, aiming to strike a balance between providing timely warnings and minimizing unnecessary panic. The impact of sound alarms on the perception of urgency when the signal is immersed in different soundscapes is thus evaluated and discussed. Preliminary results demonstrate the need of designing an adaptive alarm as a function of the soundscape where it is immersed.