Selected Approaches to the Assessment of Environmental Noise from Railways in Urban Areas.

Miroslav Němec,Anna Danihelová,Vojtěch Ondrejka,Miloš Gejdoš,Tomáš Gergeľ

doi:10.3390/ijerph18137086

Abstract

Rail transport is the second most important way of transporting people and freights by land in the European Union. Rail noise affects around 12 million people in the European Union during the day and around 9 million at night. There are two possible ways to assess environmental noise: noise measurement in situ and prediction using mathematical models. The aim of the work is based on the performed measurements and selected noise predictions to evaluate the accuracy of the prediction models and assess their sensitivity to various aspects. Two measuring points in the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region, within Slovakia, were selected for measurement, which is characterized by increased mobility of the population. For prediction, the two methodologies were selected (Schall 03 and Methodical instructions for the calculation of sound pressure level from transport). The results show that the Schall 03 method is sensitive to the measurement location (the value reaches half of the significance level) and to the location–period interaction. The second prediction method is sensitive to systematic error (absolute term) and, such as Schall 03, to the location–period interaction. This method systematically overestimates the results. Results showed greater accuracy of both prediction models compared to the measured noise values than the results of the authors in other countries and conditions.

Highlights

Noise is one of the basic environmental factors that affect the quality of the living and working environment [1,2,3,4]
That the EU’s efforts to unify the approach in all areas of life should not involve noise prediction, as individual prediction methods have been developed in country-specific conditions and can only work in another country with appropriate adjustment settings [10]
The main aim of the work was based on the performed measurements and selected noise prediction methods to evaluate their accuracy and assess their sensitivity to systematic error, measurement location, and time

Summary

Introduction

Noise is one of the basic environmental factors that affect the quality of the living and working environment [1,2,3,4]. Assessing the negative impact of noise on humans is challenging because the sensitivity (subjective and objective) of each individual to noise is different. For this reason, generally accepted methodological procedures for its assessment were developed with the selection of suitable parameters and their maximum permissible values [9,10,11,12]. The share of inland rail freight transport in total inland freight transport in the EU in 2018 was around 18.7% (Slovakia 32.6%) [13]. The passenger share from rail transport in the EU in total passenger transport was almost 8% in 2018

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Discussion

Conclusion