Annoyance provoked by single and combined sound sources from neighbours in wooden residential buildings

Land-use categories are often used to define the exposure limits of national environmental noise policies. Often different guideline values for noise are applied for purely residential areas versus residential areas with mixed-use. Mixed-use includes living plus limited activities through crafts, commerce, trade, agriculture, and forestry activities. This differentiation especially when rating noise from road, railway, and air traffic might be argued by different expectations and therefore noise annoyance in those two categories while scientific evidence is missing. It should be tested on empirically derived data. Surveys from two studies in the state of Tyrol in urban and rural areas were retrospectively matched with spatial data to analyze the potential different influences on noise effects. Using non-parametric tests, the correlation between land-use category on self-reported noise sensitivity and noise annoyance was investigated. Exposure–response for the two analyzed land-use categories showed no significant impact on noise sensitivity and exposure–response relationships for the three traffic noise sources. Including only noise annoyance, there is not sufficient evidence to define different noise policies for those two land-use categories.

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The Effect of Land-Use Categories on Traffic Noise Annoyance

Context: The aim of this study was to verify the contributing effect in the cases of combined road traffic noise and railroad traffic noise on total noise annoyance. Materials and Methods: After opening the four-track railway of the Lower Inn Valley Route in Austria, an evaluation study was conducted by an interview survey (n=1003). The data of this survey included answers on annoyance caused by railroad, road traffic noise and total annoyance as well as self-evaluated noise sensitivity. Results: When annoyance is only related to one of these sources, a 10% share of highly annoyed persons was observed at 59 dB for road noise and 60 dB for railroad noise. The annoyance model including both noise sources with a coefficient of 0.145 for road noise, 0.034 for railroad noise and 0.431 for noise sensitivity (all p-values

Stephan Bose-O'Reill

Papers

Combined annoyance response from railroad and road traffic noise in an alpine valley.