Effects of urban morphology on the traffic noise distribution through noise mapping: A comparative study between UK and China

Abstract

Due to the rapid urban development and massive population increase in many eastern cities, the difference in urban density and morphology between typical western and eastern cities is becoming significant. This consequently makes the noise distribution in the eastern cities rather different from typical low density European cities. In this research, two representative cities with different urban densities, Greater Manchester in the UK and Wuhan in China, were selected, which have low and high average urban density respectively, and also have considerable differences in building form and traffic pattern. In the mean time, these two cities have similar urban scale and traffic amount. In each city, based on the urban morphological analyses considering urban land-use, building and road density, and noise source distribution, a number of typical urban areas, 500 * 500 m 2 each, were sampled. A noise-mapping software package was then used to generate generic noise maps, based on existing digital vector maps for terrain and building, and traffic data obtained by on-site measurements. The comparison results show that the average and minimum noise level in Greater Manchester samples is generally higher than that in Wuhan samples, while the maximum noise level in Wuhan samples is mostly higher. By developing a Matlab program, correlations have been analysed between noise distributions and the urban characteristics relating to urban density, such as the road and building coverage ratio. Overall, comparisons between these two typical cities have shown significant effects of urban morphology on the traffic noise distribution.