ConaCUS: Proposal of simplified acoustic simulator for urban design

Meeting the comfort standards in urban spaces is a challenging issue that requires active collaboration between multidisciplinary experts in order to form an appropriate "design team" for each urban space. To form a good design team, the architect who orders the urban space needs to know what the key variables are important to define that area. Some simplified evaluations, but based in technical aspects, can be fundamental to establish these key variables for each case of study. In response to this question, this paper proposes an acoustic simulator (CONACUS) based on the simplified application of standard calculation methods. It provides a first information of the acoustic condition in an area, and analyse the relative importance of this acoustical variable, to identify if using precise acoustic models is requires or not. This simulator is based on a web application that allows its use with an internet navigator without installing any specific program. On the other hand, there other possible applications of a simplified Simulator of Acoustics (CONACUS) are explored in this paper. The results obtained with this simulator has lower precision and no legal validation, but it could be used by non-expert technicians and require less calculation times than the commercial calculation models.