Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
Volume 191, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110055
Keywords
Environmental pollution; Health; Noise measurement; Noise mapping; Urban configuration
Funding
- European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
- Junta de Extremadura [GR18107, IB 18050]
- COMPETE 2020, Portugal 2020, Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal [POCI-01-0247-FEDER-033691, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007633]
- CENTRO 2020 [CENTRO-01-0145-FEDER-000006]
- ERDF
- Consejerfa de Economia, Ciencia y Agenda Digital of Junta de Extremadura
- European Union
- European Social Fund (ESF) [P017014]
- Consejerfa de Economia, Ciencia y Agenda Digital of Junta de Extremadura [TA18019]
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Noise pollution is a major environmental problem due to its impact on human health and implications for other spheres of society. Since road traffic is the main source of noise pollution, the use of measurement methodologies to accurately determine the environmental noise levels to which the facades of buildings in cities are exposed is an important issue. This paper presents an experimental study in urban environments that uses different configurations to evaluate the influence of the position of the microphone and the parking lanes on the levels of road traffic noise to which the population is exposed. In urban settings in which sound waves propagate without obstacles between the lanes of traffic and the receivers, broadband results for the differences between noise levels measured by microphones placed at heights of 4.0 and 1.5 m showed a significant increase with an increase in the distance between the microphone and sound source of between -0.8 and 0.9 dBA over a range from 2 to 8 m. This difference between the two microphones was greater at points where a lane of parked vehicles was located between the road traffic lanes and the receivers were placed near the facades of building. At the same heights, the broadband difference in sound levels ranged from 2.7 to 4.5 dBA. This acoustic shielding effect due to the presence of parked vehicles started to be relevant in the 250 Hz band and increased progressively with frequency. Taking into account these experimental results and the recommendations in the European Noise Directive, it would be important to apply corrections to sound indicators for road traffic noise that are related to the height of the microphone. Making a distinction between urban configurations with and without lines of parked vehicles between the microphone and the road traffic lanes would be advisable.
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