Noise Mapping and Measurements for Sound Environment Assessment in a Typical Chinese Water-Rich Village

Abstract

The construction of beautiful villages in China is carrying more and more demand for leisure and health care, thus increasing requirements for the quality of the village environment. In this paper, Huanggongwang in Fuyang, Zhejiang Province in China, a typical water-rich village, was selected as the research object to study the sound environment quality by adapting noise mapping and field measurements. A village acoustic simulation model was established by the layout of the villages, roads, and water system; the three-dimensional spatial distribution of sound pressure level was based on actual sound source identification and measurements for sound environment evaluation. The result shows that the combination of the arithmetic mean value method for sound pressure level and noise pollution index approach can better represent the characteristics of sound environment quality compared with traditional noise evaluation standards. The average sound pressure level measured on-site in the village was 62.4 dB(A), and the PN index was 0.83, which reveals the importance of resolving the issue of environmental noise in the villages. Moreover, this evaluation method excludes the chance of actual measurement results. Therefore, it provides a better measure of the quality of the rural sound environment, which serves as a basis for the scientific planning of rural construction.