Modeling and mitigation of noise on the A23 motorway using GIS

Rendering at the European Directive 2002/49/EC, all EU members have to draw up a strategic noise map for all agglomerations with more than 250,000 inhabitants and for all major airports, roads and railways. A study of environmental impact assessment on motorway A23 in the stretch between Castelo Branco–Alcains (Portugal), based in the impact of the environmental noise, allowed the modeling the noise variation, which can be useful for establishing mitigation measures. The results show that noise model can be a useful tool for the monitoring noise impact in surrounding of motorways.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Treatment of road traffic noise in EU countries with a focus on Directive 2002/49/EC

The trend of continuous increase for mobility requirements results in a progressive increase in the use of vehicles of all modes of transport, which contributes to a significant increase in noise levels, especially in urban areas. The most significant noise in urban areas is traffic noise, where road traffic contributes the most. This paper reviews the treatment of road traffic noise in the European Union with a focus on Directive 2002/49 / EC. The paper presents the basics of the mechanisms of the institutional and management framework in the field of road traffic noise monitoring in EU countries. Also, the results of road traffic noise monitoring in EU countries, indicators of population exposure to road traffic noise, as well as indicators of the impact of road traffic noise on the health of the population, were presented

Strategic vibration mapping for railway infrastructures

The Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC requires the Member States to determine the exposure to environmental noise through noise mapping for agglomerations, roads, railways and airports using common methods of assessment. These maps will be made available to the public and will allow adopting action plans to prevent and reduce environmental noise, particularly where exposure levels can induce harmful effects. The END does not establish how to asses or reduce vibration impact caused by railway infrastructures. Within this directive, no common method of assessment or evaluation of people exposure to railway induced vibrations are defined. In this paper, Strategic Vibration Mapping concept for railway infrastructures is developed including discussion about input data, vibration harshness evaluation, quantification and action planning.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Temporal and spatial stratification for the estimation of nocturnal long-term noise levels

Noise pollution in cities is mainly caused by the vehicular traffic but, depending on the place under assessment, it could be affected by the land use. For noise assessment and strategic noise mapping, the night period equivalent level (), which evaluates sleep disturbance, is one of the requirements of the European Directive 2002/49/EC to be presented for the equivalent time of one year. This research aims to find the influence of the land use in the weekdays stratification to improve the accuracy of the long-term noise level estimation for the night period. It is found that depending on the land use of the place under assessment, the weekdays temporal and spatial stratification could be affected by leisure activities. From a statistical analysis based on a clustering procedure of samples in 19 points, it is observed that both, temporal and spatial stratification depend on the intensity of the surrounding leisure activity, and not on traffic. Following these stratification criteria, a sampling method is presented that reduces by 47% the number of days needed to estimate the annual levels with respect to random samplingPostprint (author's final draft

IMAGINE Project: Urban Measurements of Lden and Lnight and Calculation of the Associated Uncertainties

This article describes the principles of the new measurement method developed within the IMAGINE European project to determine Lden and Lnight, as defined by the European Noise Directive 2002/49/EC, by direct measurement of the noise levels. The measurement method was tested in a real and complex urban environment including a major road, a major railway line and an industrial site. A description is given for the calculation of the yearly averaged levels and the uncertainty estimation. Concerning such long term indicators, estimation of uncertainty is a rather complex task, especially if the yearly Lden and Lnight are derived from measurements performed over a short period of the year. The uncertainties concern the microphone position, the source variation, the meteorological variations, the correction for background noise and the sound level meter class 1 uncertainty. The example described here is based on a measurement campaign performed over one year in the city of Pisa (Italy).The aforementioned measurements would be typically applied to support the credibility of noise map calculations towards the citizens and to validate calculations of noise maps in well-defined situations.JRC.I.5-Physical and chemical exposure

Evaluation of municipal waste incineration impact on environmental noise

The EU Directive 2002/49/EC or Environmental Noise Directive (END) aims to define a common approach intended to avoid, prevent or reduce the harmful effects, including annoyance, due to exposure to environmental noise. Under this Directive, member states are obliged to produce the noise maps of the major roads, railways airports, large agglomerations and industrial activity sites. The first maps had to be produced for the main agglomerations by July 2007 and the first action plans should be activated no lather than July 2008. In this work we consider the industrial noise produced by municipal waste incineration; the study was developed to provide data of the sound power level along the facades buildings and contours of this site that can be used to produce strategic noise maps. To characterize the impact of the waste incineration plant, measurements of the noise emissions were performed in situ. The distribution of sound power and sound input levels have been calculated by SoundPLAN\uae computer model. The results of this work can provide a re-applicable method for the production of noise levels due to industrial noise sources. The results are suitable to be included in noise maps for agglomerations, in line with the END expectatio

Environmental Noise Mapping as a Smart Urban Tool Development

Since the European Directive 2002/49, large transportation infrastructure along with large urban areas should have completed strategic noise maps (SNM) and the relative noise action plans (NAP). The majority of European Member States (MS) has enforced this directive and completed fully or, in some cases, partially, with European smart cities to use and share the same criteria and methodologies and along with transport operators to communicate to the public the relevant results and respective action plans by ensuring the citizen’s awareness about the environmental noise, the quality acoustic environment, and their effect to their professional and everyday lifestyle. Today, 18 years after its first edition, the European Directive 2002/49/EC is needed to be reformulated to take into account all defects that have been identified and to adapt as well as possible to contemporary constraints. New methodology tools have been developed especially regarding soundscaping and environmental acoustic rehabilitation of urban areas, and the respective chapter will describe the progress being made on these smart developments of cities and infrastructures. This chapter will also evoke criticisms of these smart tools and will present results from several—state of the art—case studies especially regarding the practical and theoretical limits they face

Characterisation of wheel/rail roughness and track decay rates on a tram network

From the beginning of 2019, the new CNOSSOS-EU method shall be used for strategic noise mapping in application of Directive 2002/49/EC instead of national noise prediction methods. For the railway part, the operators are responsible for providing input data describing the different noise sources characterising the railway system. Concerning the rolling noise, the vehicle and the track have to be distinguished by providing specific transfer functions and wheel/rail roughness spectra. For conventional railways, default values are given in the CNOSSOS-EU method and national operators generally have experimental data at their disposal to evaluate these new input parameters. This is not the case for tram networks, for which very few measurements exist, notably concerning the wheel and rail roughness or the track transfer function. In 2018, Acoucité and IFSTTAR performed an acoustic test campaign on a French tram network in order to propose tram input data from pass-by measurements corresponding to various sites and vehicles. In this paper, the results concerning the direct measurements of wheel/rail roughness and track decay rates (a key parameter for the assessment of the track transfer function) are presented and discussed. The main differences with data corresponding to conventional railways are highlighted