Evaluation of road traffic noise exposure considering differential crowd characteristics

• Published in: Transportation research. Part D, Transport and environment Vol. 105; p. 103250
• Main Authors: Wang, Haibo, Wu, Zeyu, Chen, Jincai, Chen, Liang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2022
• Subjects: Heterogeneous crowd distribution; Noise functional regions; Noise response curve; Traffic noise exposure; Noise functional regions; Heterogeneous crowd distribution; Traffic noise exposure; Noise response curve
• ISSN: 1361-9209; 1879-2340
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trd.2022.103250

•A road traffic noise evaluation method for heterogeneous crowds is presented.•Heterogeneous crowd distribution, age and acoustic requirements are considered.•A noise response curve (NRC) is established.•The application verified the reasonableness and practicality of the method. The primary objective of this study is to develop an urban traffic noise exposure evaluation method for differential crowd characteristics, which takes crowd distribution, ages and acoustic requirements into consideration. First, road traffic noise data are simulated using a line-source model, and crowd distribution data are obtained by the decomposition of demographic data based on the different building attraction coefficients of the heterogeneous crowd. Then, the noise response curve (NRC) of the heterogeneous crowd is established with the normalization of subjective feelings of respondents and calibrating the response level of each age group in combination. Finally, with the help of the proposed noise evaluation indicators, and considering the noise function requirements (NFR), the traffic noise evaluation of differential crowd characteristics is realized. The method is applied to a typical scenario, and the results and analysis verified the reasonability and practicability of the method in urban traffic noise exposure evaluation.