SOURCE NOISE CHARACTERISATION OF HETEROGENEOUS TRAFFIC

Abstract

With the increase in urban road traffic, road noise pollution has emerged as a major concern for the public. Daily exposure to loud road traffic noise isn't just a nuisance—it can seriously impact health. Beyond the risk of Noise-Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL), it's associated with issues like high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep disturbances, and stress, affecting people of all ages, especially children. Physical symptoms such as headaches and stomach issues can also result from this noise pollution, and in extreme cases, it's even linked to heart attacks. Moreover, it's connected to irritation, annoyance, cardiovascular problems, stroke risk, diabetes, hypertension, and hearing loss. The most common health effects include annoyance and sleep disturbances. While this information covers many aspects of road noise, it might not address all facets of the problem. As a result, there has been significant research focused on controlling and reducing the harmful effects of traffic noise pollution. One important measure used to evaluate road traffic pollution is the subjective annoyance level of traffic noise. This can be assessed through subjective experimental methods or objective prediction methods. Subjective experimental methods involve conducting social surveys or listening experiments in laboratories to directly assess the subjective annoyance level. These methods are highly reliable but can be time-consuming and require significant effort. On the other hand, objective prediction methods involve extracting acoustic features from the noise and using predictive models to estimate the quantitative measures. This approach does not rely on human perception and can provide a rapid evaluation of the sound pressure levels only. To address this issue, various studies have proposed mapping the difference between noise and loudness levels based on the results of listening experiments. This mapping allows for the rapid evaluation of the noise annoyance level by combining the advantages of both subjective and objective methods. The study focuses on analyzing the source noise characteristics and perceived annoyance, particularly in heterogeneous transportation systems. The objective is to characterize the urban soundscape through relative field measurements and relation with the perceived annoyance through subjective analysis.