COVID-19 and self-reported noise reports: A comparative study

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected people's lives differently, from mobility concerns and staying-at-home orders to all life routines. These changes have, in turn, affected daily life in urban environments based on different factors, including air quality and noise. For example, COVID-19 has resulted in quieter environments due to less mobility on streets and less anthropogenic activities. On the other hand, staying-at-home orders promote more activities to occur at the building scale, i.e., individual stay at home and produce more noise for neighbors. This study examines the noise complaints data in Dallas, USA, to understand this association by comparing the noise complaints during the COVID-19 period and the same data period in 2019. Findings surprisingly show reduced noise complaints during the COVID-19 time frame by about 14% compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. The study then performed spatial and statistical analyses, and findings show that the majority of noise reduction occurred in the city center. In other words, the noise complaints were more spatially dispersed at the outskirts of the city during the COVID-19 period. To identify specific factors, there is a need for some other techniques and studies.