Noise Source Predominance Map: a new representation for strategic noise maps

Abstract

Environmental noise prevention starts from strategic noise maps of main transport infrastructures and agglomerations. Graduated colors are representative of the average noise levels produced in space by each individual source, or the by the overall sum. Among their purposes, communication of results to population has been the most neglected. The present paper proposes predominance maps for the first time in environmental acoustic (NSP). NSP are visualization tool showing the predominant source in each point by means of polygons and colors. Also Intensity Noise Source Predominance maps (I-NSP) are proposed, which add visualizations of noise exposure levels to NSP by coloring the polygons according to a color-scale. Both NSP and I-NSP are new visualization that would help understanding and assigning responsibilities for exceeding limits, but they also represent a valid support for locating the acoustic monitoring stations when required. As case studies, the maps are calculated in port areas, as they are large areas with a great variability of different types of noise sources and represent a smaller case than agglomeration, but with higher complexity.

Application of Noise Source Predominance Maps (NSP) to agglomerates

“…Therefore, instead of the potential five sources, just three sources were available for the predominance evaluation: road, railway and industrial. As it was already pointed in [13] the NSP map allows for fast identification of the predominance of the different sources. On the other hand, on the surface, the I-NSP map looks like a regular strategic map.…”

“…The color scheme follows Weninger one [15] in order to enhances the visibility for color blindness affected people and to improve the readability. The inclusion of Ship and Port sources is a consequence of the results provided by [13]. When the criterion is not met by any sources in the NSP, a white circle is associated with the grid's point.…”

“…For this reason, visualizing the information in an exploited way would be pivotal in understanding, foreseeing and prevent complaints and eventual negative health effects [11,12]. Noise Source Predominance Map (NSP map) Intensity Noise Source Predominance map (I-NSP map) have been developed in order to solve these issues [13]. They have been originally tested in ports, as they are large areas with a great variability of different types of noise sources where responsible for exceeding are not easily detectable.…”

Preliminary study of reuse of plastic bottles as metamaterial

“…A noise source predominance map is one technique for visualizing the predominant source of noise using colourful polygons. 2 Fredianelli et al 3 proposed a road traffic monitoring video measurement system (VTM) based on vehicle recognition and low-cost camera and used the machine learning approach to compute the acoustic impact on citizen before and after installing intelligent transportation system (ITS). It was found that installing ITS leads to increase the noise exposure for the person who were already exposed to high level of noise but it decreases the noise exposure for the person who were exposed to medium level of noise.…”

Noise impact evaluations of an outdoor air filter tower in urban blocks

“…Noise is an important public issue and is recognized as an environmental pollution source. Noise evaluations and mapping (Licitra et al, 2022) are needed for the well-being of citizens or workers exposed to high noise levels. Noise prevention plays a vital role in avoiding noise levels that lead to complaints (Gaetano et al, 2019;Lou and Ou, 2019;Tong and Kang, 2021) and health effects, such as sleep disorders with awakenings (Erickson and Newman, 2017;Minichilli et al, 2018), hypertension ischemic heart disease (Bluhm et al, 2007;Dratva et al, 2012;Van Kempen and Babisch, 2012), diastolic blood pressure (Lee et al, 2019;Petri et al, 2021), decreased working performance (Horr et al, 2016;Rossi et al, 2018;Vukić et al, 2021), and annoyance (Miedema and Oudshoorn, 2001).…”