AES Europe 2026

Situational awareness is a multisensory ability that
enables individuals to perceive; appropriately take into
account their immediate environment. This perception of the
world through our senses is carried out continuously;
unconsciously throughout the day. When auditory perception
is degraded, an individual may no longer correctly perceive
a doorbell, a water leak, or an alarm signal, which
negatively affects quality of life; may lead to
dangerous situations. Auditory perception can in particular
be degraded by hearing loss, a common; widespread
condition. The most common treatment consists of wearing
hearing aids, which are mainly designed to improve speech
intelligibility, especially in noisy environments. Feedback
from hearing-impaired people; hearing-aid users
indicates that, although auditory situational awareness has
been recognised as an essential component of well-being, it
remains insufficiently studied; requires further
investigation. There is currently no standard method for
assessing to which extent one's situational awareness is
affected by hearing impairment; the use of hearing aids.
This is a complex process that requires assessing the
perception of relevant sound events within a continuous
stream of multisensorial information, by individuals who
have different subjective preferences. Most existing
methods are limited to evaluating only a subset of the
problem, such as identification; localisation of
non-speech sound events. The rise of new technologies, such
as virtual reality, enables the development of assessment
methods within more realistic yet controlled environments.
This study aims to review existing methods in order to
highlight their limitations in addressing the issue at hand.