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In this study, we develop a Vision\u2010Language Model for Soundscape (VLM4S), an exploratory, sensor\u2010free framework for inferring acoustic conditions from street\u2010view imagery. This framework addresses three tasks: identifying visible sound sources, predicting sound pressure levels (SPL), and classifying sound types (Natural\/Mechanical\/Human\u2010made). Utilizing a small\u2010scale experimental dataset of 200 co\u2010located training pairs, 20 pilot validation samples, and 40 out\u2010of\u2010sample test cases spanning eleven cities globally, we evaluate whether a vision\u2010language foundation model can utilize its pre\u2010trained visual knowledge to estimate real\u2010world environmental sound levels. The fine\u2010tuned model achieves a Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 5.4\u2009dB on the pilot validation set. Ablation analysis reveals that integrating street\u2010view imagery and Mel\u2010spectrograms with a Chain\u2010of\u2010Thought (CoT) prompt achieves the lowest error (), outperforming pure visual scrutiny () and direct prediction without CoT (). External comparisons against United States Department of Transportation annual noise maps across 4000+ Manhattan locations reveal a moderate spatial correlation (, , ). While output discretization limits this generative approach for strict regulatory use, the framework provides a highly sample\u2010efficient baseline for exploratory soundscape assessment and hotspot identification in data\u2010scarce regions.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1111\/tgis.70394","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,15]],"date-time":"2026-09-15T18:13:57Z","timestamp":1789496037000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1002\/crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["VLM4S: A Vision\u2010Language Model Framework for Geographically and Environmentally Informed Soundscape Assessment"],"prefix":"10.1111","volume":"30","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-4035-6989","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pengyu","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography University of South Carolina  Columbia South Carolina USA"},{"name":"Department of Geography Virginia Tech  Blacksburg Virginia USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6395-6235","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Sicheng","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography University of South Carolina  Columbia South Carolina USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5180-0380","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Fangzheng","family":"Lyu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography Virginia Tech  Blacksburg Virginia USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0077-1660","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"John A.","family":"Kupfer","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography University of South Carolina  Columbia South Carolina USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0306-9535","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cuizhen","family":"Wang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography University of South Carolina  Columbia South Carolina USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4323-382X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Xiao","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Sciences Emory University  Atlanta Georgia USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Tiancheng","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geography University of South Carolina  Columbia South Carolina USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"311","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_10_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/s44384\u2010025\u201000003\u2010y"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/S0140\u20106736(13)61613\u2010X"},{"key":"e_1_2_10_4_1","unstructured":"Bordes F. 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