Model based monitoring for industrial and traffic noise control

Noise control starts by understanding the actual noise situation. Especially for situations where the distance between industrial and traffic noise sources and a local community is in the order of one kilometer or more, it may not be clear what sources are the main contributors to annoyance. Then a combination of monitoring and modeling is desired to get the required insight. This is demonstrated for a local community where strongly timevarying noise was perceived from both industry and traffic. With the use of data from a nearby meteorological mast the time-varying sound propagation was calculated and the actual traffic flow was used on an hourly basis. The calculated results matched with the occurrence of complaints. Furthermore, it was shown that for some periods of time the more nearby industry contributes in the same amount as the more distant traffic. A standard model predicts much lower traffic noise levels, using average traffic flows and a standard meteorology. For a second project a large scale model based monitoring network for traffic noise is briefly highlighted. It was aimed to localize and quantify traffic noise sources, but it can also be used in combination with industrial noise sources