Abstract
Noise energetic indicators, like Lden, show good correlations with long term annoyance, but should be supplemented by other parameters describing the sound fluctuations, which are very common in urban areas and negatively impact noise annoyance. Thus, in this paper, the hourly values of continuous equivalent level LAeqh and the intermittency ratio (IR) were both considered to describe the urban road traffic noise, monitored in 90 sites in the city of Milan and covering different types of road, from motorways to local roads. The noise data have been processed by clustering methods to detect similarities and to figure out a criterion to classify the urban sites taking into account both equivalent noise levels and road traffic noise events. Two clusters were obtained and, considering the cluster membership of each site, the decimal logarithm of the day-time (06:00–22:00) traffic flow was used to associate each new road with the clusters. In particular, roads with average day-time hourly traffic flow ≥1900 vehicles/hour were associated with the cluster with high traffic flow. The described methodology could be fruitfully applied on road traffic noise data in other cities.
Highlights
According to the data provided by the European Environment Agency (EAA), “more than million people are reported to be exposed above 55 dB Lden due to road traffic noise inside urban areas”, and nearly 90 million are estimated in Europe [1]
Cluster analysis ofof urban road traffic noise monitored in the Cluster analysis was wasperformed performedon ona adata datasample sample urban road traffic noise monitored in city the of
Describing the, Aeqh city of Milan, formed by the hourly values of A-weighted continuous equivalent level LAeqh sound energy, and the intermittency ratio (IR), quantifying the noise events owing to vehicle pass-by
Summary
According to the data provided by the European Environment Agency (EAA), “more than million people are reported to be exposed above 55 dB Lden due to road traffic noise inside urban areas”, and nearly 90 million are estimated in Europe [1]. The people’s awareness towards the adverse health effects, both direct and indirect, produced by road traffic noise is increasing. There is evidence in the literature that “sleep disturbance and annoyance, mostly related to road traffic noise, comprise the main burden of environmental noise” [2]. Lden , introduced by the European Directive 2002/49/EC on the assessment and management of environmental noise [3], is commonly applied by legislation to assess urban sound environments
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