Distinguished Plenary Lectures
We are pleased to announce that IISA2025 will feature TEN Distinguished Plenary Speakers. Further details about their lectures will be shared as they become available.
#1 Propagation and Mitigation Model of Mixed Road Traffic Noise for Kanpur
Prof. Manoranjan Parida, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee has taken over charge of Director, CSIR-Central Road Research Institute on 20th September, 2022.
Prof. Manoranjan Parida was Deputy Director at IIT Roorkee before joining CSIR-CRRI. He has been MoRTH Chair Professor on Development of Highway System in India at IIT Roorkee during 2013-2017. He has worked on an Imprint Research Project “Propagation and Mitigation Model of Mixed Traffic Noise for Planning Mid-Sized Indian Cities”. Design and Development of Noise Barrier for Flyovers in Delhi is an innovative contribution by him. He has provided substantial inputs for third party quality audit of 1700 km. of State Highway in the State of Bihar (during 2007-2013) under the RSVY Project. He has provided consultancy for more than 350 urban road infrastructure projects, intercity corridors, rural roads, and expressways. He received Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award in the year 2004 from Indian Road Congress. He has received the Outstanding Teacher Award of IIT Roorkee. He is presently Convener of Traffic Engineering & Transportation Planning (H-1) of Indian Roads Congress, New Delhi and Convener of Bitumen, Tar & Other Products (PCD 6) Committee of Bureau of Indian Standards. Currently Prof. Parida is President of Indian Roads Congress.
Director, CSIR-Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi, India.
My lecture shall explain development of a scientifically robust model to assess and mitigate mixed road traffic noise for Kanpur City taken up under IMPRINT Project. The primary outcome of this research has been a traffic noise propagation and mitigation model suitable for Indian mid-sized cities, where road traffic is typically mixed and complex. The research involved extensive field data collection across residential, commercial, industrial, and silence zones of the City and a detailed classified volume and speed analysis across different vehicle types, including electric vehicles. Traffic Noise Modelling was taken up through REMEL (Reference Energy Mean Emission Level) equations for 11 vehicle categories and FHWA-based models to estimate equivalent noise levels (Leq) with high accuracy. Noise Mitigation aspect were studies through attenuation effects of vegetation, distance, and physical barriers like boundary walls.
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#2 Community-based approaches to creating sound-based place identity
Christina Mediastika is a tenure-track Professor of Architecture at the School of Creative Industry, Universitas Ciputra Surabaya, Indonesia. She holds a doctoral degree from the University of Strathclyde. Her primary area of expertise is architecture, focusing on architectural and environmental acoustics. She developed an interest in this field due to the community's low awareness and limited knowledge regarding the importance of sound in daily life. Often undervalued in architecture, sound is an element that Christina strives to incorporate into her students' design projects from the outset. Her understanding of sound's significance in our environment deepened when she began working with visually impaired communities in 2017. Through this experience, she learned that an ideal sound environment consists of background and distinctive sounds. This awareness is essential for the visually impaired and benefits everyone, as human ears are more sensitive than our eyes when perceiving surroundings. This means they let both positive and negative surrounding conditions into our body more readily than the eyes, which can be closed for unwanted visuals. Unfortunately, this sensitivity is not usually utilised or trained as much as our visual senses. In addition to her work with visually impaired individuals, Christina has recently initiated a research series aimed at preserving and, where necessary, restoring the unique historical sounds of Indonesian cities. She sees these sounds as treasures of the country's intangible heritage and a crucial part of urban identity, which modern lifestyles have significantly taken over. Christina and her team's works have been published in reputable journals, conference proceedings, and books.
Dept. of Architecture Universitas Ciputra Surabaya, CitraLand, CBD Boulevard, Made, Sambikerep, Surabaya 60219, Indonesia.
Sound is often an undervalued aspect of life, especially in developing countries, where low awareness about its significance stems from more pressing concerns like food security and financial stability. A review of noise profiles and law enforcement in developing nations within the ASEAN region highlights this issue, supported by the value of society over the self. In such contexts, the noise generated by communities is often not viewed as problematic. Acoustic environments in these countries are dominated by traffic noise, lacking distinctive sounds that help establish a place’s identity, which is particularly important for visually impaired individuals in countries like India and Indonesia, which have the highest blind populations globally, according to the UNDP in 2017. Unique sounds are vital for blind individuals as they help navigate and identify potential dangers. Before modern machinery and lifestyles, each location had distinctive sounds, often from daily life, cultural practices, and transportation. These sounds helped distinguish one place from another. However, preserving these distinctive sounds has become increasingly complex with the shift to modern living forms. A feasible approach to preserving these sounds is through virtual preservation before they are lost with the passing of source persons who experienced them. This effort involves qualitative and quantitative methods, with local communities, including blind people, playing a key role in data collection. Given the subjective nature of sound perceptions, researchers must consider diverse factors and recommendations to translate their findings into virtual and real-world settings effectively.
#3 Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) Framework Driven
Arnab is a researcher, maritime strategist, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder & Director of the Maritime Research Centre (MRC) under the Foundation for Underwater Domain Awareness (FUDA), Pune, which is working on a unique concept of Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) as its main focus. He also runs his Start-up, M/S NirDhwani Technology Pvt Ltd which provides consultancies and services for high-end maritime security solutions and marine conservation support. He advises start-ups on underwater technology solutions and defence strategies. He has over 100 publications, a book, and two book chapters to his credit. Arnab was commissioned as an electrical officer in 1994. He was deputed to IIT Delhi in 2001 for his Master's in Underwater Electronics and subsequently appointed as the Project Officer at IIT Delhi to manage the Navy's Underwater R&D. He delivered multiple technology transfers, including for the strategic submarine project related to underwater systems and algorithms. He also completed his PhD from IIT Delhi in 2007 in underwater signal processing. He was invited to Tokyo University in 2014 as a visiting researcher to participate in the design and development of passive acoustic monitoring systems for freshwater dolphins. He was also at the Acoustic Research Laboratory of the Tropical Marine Science Institute at the National University of Singapore in 2015 for a year, post his retirement from the Navy to understand underwater technology development from a global perspective.
Dr(Cdr) Arnab Das, Founder & Director
Maritime Research Center (MRC)
The tropical waters both in the marine and freshwater systems present unique
challenges for Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) across varied applications. The
sonar deployed for any underwater applications in the tropical waters, suffers over
60% performance degradation, compared to the temperate and polar waters, where
they were originally designed and developed. Most of our deployment strategies are
formulated in the temperate/polar waters, thus this performance limitation is a serious
concern. The digital transformation in the underwater domain, referred as Marine
Spatial Planning (MSP) is the well-known governance tool for managing the
challenges and opportunities across varied applications. However, implementation of
MSP in the tropical waters with the unique sonar performance challenges is an
interesting research and innovation problem. The UDA framework proposed by the
author, provides a comprehensive, structured and inclusive way forward for policy and
technology intervention along with acoustic capacity & capability building to ensure
real-time and futuristic realization of the MSP in the tropical waters. The
comprehensive, translates to include all the stakeholders across applications with
stakes in the underwater domain. The structured framework allows seamless and
effective interaction among the stakeholders and enablers to make it happen. The
inclusiveness allows each and every section, including the coastal and riverine
communities to be part of the developmental process and accrue justified and
equitable benefit. The nuanced policy interventions have to ensure a safe, secure,
sustainable growth for all in the region. This will involve a multi-disciplinary and multisectoral approach to ensure cohesive and nuanced way forward, deeply rooted to the
local socio-political, socio-economic and socio-cultural realities. The technology
interventions have to ensure real-time monitoring of the site-specific tropical conditions
across varied applications. This will involve core capabilities in Digital Signal
Processing (DSP), Robotics, Data Science and more. The capacity and capability
building has to be across the entire chain of policy makers, stakeholders, practitioners,
indigenous communities and more to ensure enhanced UDA driven MSP. The
conventional approach has been extremely fragmented, with each stakeholder trying
to manage their own issues in a limited sense. The fragmentation distributes the
resources, making it unviable to plan high technology Research & Development (R&D)
approach including Modelling & Simulations (M&S), backed by field experimental
validation in the tropical waters. M&S will allow precise prediction of future events and
ensure effective policy interventions. Pooling of Resources and Synergizing of Efforts
across the stakeholders is the key to ensure optimum resource deployment and the
UDA framework facilitates this for the developing nations with limited resources. The
tropical waters are known for rich bio-diversity and high underwater mineral resources,
however still the nations in the region are not able to harness the benefits and remains
victims of natural disasters and security boogey. Geopolitical and geostrategic
meddling by the extra-regional powers can be effectively countered, if we implement
the UDA framework driven MSP for the tropical waters. UDA framework driven MSP
can be a game changer ensuring good governance. This talk will elaborate on this
critical issue with multiple case studies and real-world implementation stories.
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