Litigating Community Noise Annoyance: A Human Factors Perspective

Abstract

Noise annoyance in the community setting is a prominent source of civil legal action and local government hearings. Measurement, interpretation, and enforcement of community noise offenses is a challenging task, particularly when zoning regulations or noise ordinances are not in place for guidance. This paper provides a human factors perspective on how to measure community noise, interpret noise data, render comparisons against benchmarks, provide conclusions about expected noise impact on the community, and plot objective determinants of predicted sleep arousal and speech interference, all for use in legal proceedings. A common community noise case study example (automobile racetrack noise) is used for illustrative purposes.