DEVELOPMENT OF REFERENCE ENERGY MEAN EMISSION LEVEL EQUATIONS FOR TRAFFIC IN KANPUR

Abstract

Noise is one of the environmental pollutions that we inherit daily. With the rapid industrialization, urbanization and population growth noise has become a major concern. Noise is considered as a slow poison, as we cannot see and generally ignore it. Generally, longer exposure to noise level causes feelings of annoyance, irritation, damage to auditory mechanism, a huge number of health-related effects like physiological disorder, psychological disorders, disturbance of daily activities and performance, hyper-tension. Traffic noise pollution being harmful for living beings, demands its proper mitigation. For this, factors on highway affecting the noise level need to be carefully identified. An exact relationship between these factors and the noise level needs to be developed. The studies conducted in this field have revealed certain factors that affect the noise level due to traffic. Some of the factors affecting noise level and the basic noise level equations are traffic speed, traffic volume, types of vehicle, meteorological conditions, types of pavement surface. The study of Reference energy mean emission level is a necessity as it helps to predict the noise caused by vehicles. Knowing these equations in advance could prove to be helpful as proper abatement measures could be applied and reduce the noise pollution from vehicles. The basic noise level predicted from these REMEL equations has the maximum weightage in determining the actual noise produced by any vehicle. It is this noise on which the corrections and factors are applied to know the actual noise. So for efficient and accurate noise prediction models, correct REMEL equations is a necessity. The primary aim of the study was to prepare the Reference Energy Mean Emission Levels for the traffic in Kanpur. The relationship of the traffic noise with the vehicular characteristic that is the age of the vehicle and environmental factor that is air temperature was the secondary objective of the study. The relationship between the noise levels and the speed of vehicles is found to be of the form Leq =a log(V)+b for each vehicle category with R2 values greater than 0.8 indicating good fit. As the secondary aim of the study is to develop the relationship between the noise level with vehicular as well as climatic factors, two studies are conducted to find these relationships.