Community Response to Noise from Hot-Spots at a Major Road in Quito (Ecuador) and Its Application for Identification and Ranking These Areas

Abstract

Environmental legislation in Ecuador is advancing with the legitimate aspiration of providing citizens with new standards of quality and environmental health. In the context of environmental noise, these legislative advances are based on the experience accumulated in other countries, which is an advantage that must be managed with caution by incorporating local factors into noise management procedures. This study advances two lines of work. The first is to survey the population about their attitude towards noise from a major road to try to detect local factors in the annoyance and sleep disturbances. The second uses this information to compare noise indicators for the detection and ranking of hot-spots from major roads. The interviewees exhibited a high level of annoyance and sleep disturbance due to noise compared with the results of other studies. Results show that there are small differences in the definition of hot-spots when using WHO’s dose–response curves for Lden ≥ 68 dB for and for Lnight ≥ 58 dB, in comparison with the curves generated in this study (CS). Regarding the application of both dose–response curves (WHO vs. CS) to the estimation of the population at risk of the harmful effect of nighttime traffic noise (HSD), small oscillations are also observed even when Lnight ≥ 58 dB and Lnoche ≥ 60 dB are used.

GIS tool for leisure noise management

“…At the moment it has been devised for a radius of 100 meters (projected on the XY plane). Under this same idea, more complex tools had already been developed previously, but in ArcGIS [9]. The information that is available in each of the receivers (R) is that of the noise and people exposed, but also that contained in the repository described in the previous section 3.1., which is that of every building.…”

“…In case of excessive noise in the receiver, the sources that generate the excess noise are identified in included in the building geodatabase repository. Briefly, in the hypothetical case that all the distances S-R were equal, the relationship established between the noise level at a receiver point and the responsibility of each emission source is [9]:…”

“…In general, the S-R distances will be different and then a weighting factor will have to be introduced in Eqn. (1), that will take into account the relation dS,R/dS,R,min [9], being dS,R.min the minimum distance between a defined source and all receivers under its influence.…”