Annoyance

About: Annoyance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2015 publications have been published within this topic receiving 38300 citations. The topic is also known as: annoy.

Annoyance penalty of periodically amplitude-modulated wide-band sound.

Abstract: Amplitude modulation exists in many environmental noise types. A penalty has been suggested for legal noise assessment to such sounds, but the scientific evidence is limited. The purpose of this research was to determine the annoyance penalty of amplitude modulated (AM) sound as a function of the modulation frequency fm and depth Dm. A psychoacoustic laboratory experiment was conducted with 40 participants to explore how subjective loudness and annoyance of AM sound depends on fm (from 0.25 to 16 Hz), Dm (from 1 to 14 dB), and overall spectrum (two alternatives). The sounds consisted of both AM sounds and reference sounds without amplitude modulation. The AM sounds were played at 35 dB LAeq, which is typical for environmental noise both indoors and in residential yards. The annoyance penalty increased with increasing fm and Dm. The penalties varied from 4 to 12 dB, when Dm ranged from 4 to 14 dB and fm ranged from 1 to 16 Hz. For the lowest fm= 0.25 Hz, and Dm = 1 dB, no penalty could be suggested. The results suggest a potential need for a penalty for low-level AM sounds for certain ranges of fm and Dm, applied for the periods with AM sound.

Characterising noise and annoyance in homes near a wind farm

Abstract: INTRODUCTION Annoyance due to wind farm noise has been shown to occur at lower sound pressure levels than annoyance due to other environmental noise sources such as road, rail and aircraft and the reason for this is unclear [1]. It is worth mentioning here that noise exposure is often calculated as an outdoor exposure and the level difference between outdoor and indoor exposure is frequency dependent, which may in part explain differences in indoor annoyance from various noise sources. Only a few field studies have investigated the relationship between wind turbine noise and annoyance in the past [1 − 7] and almost all of these studies use A-weighted sound pressure level as the sound emission metric to correlate with annoyance. Standard techniques of measuring noise in residents’ homes that rely upon 10-minute averages and A-weighting may not have the required fidelity to capture important features of the noise character such as amplitude modulation and low frequency noise [8, 9]. However, it is difficult to record noise in sufficient detail in the field to resolve these effects due to large data storage and postprocessing requirements. Additionally, annoyance events may be hard to predict and only occur once per day, or occur when certain conditions are present. To overcome these issues, a system that records time series noise data in a home at the precise time that the resident claims to be annoyed was recently developed by Doolan and Moreau [7]. This system was able to successfully relate the noise level in a home to personal annoyance level; however, the system was preliminary and a number of improvements were needed to increase its usefulness. Specifically, it is desirable to understand the role of local wind speed and direction on noise level and annoyance. Also, it is important to understand how the noise level varies over long periods of time (when the resident is annoyed and not annoyed) to determine if certain weather or other conditions are related to noise level and annoyance. In this paper, an improved resident controlled noise and annoyance recording system is presented. The system records resident rated annoyance and two minutes of corresponding time-series noise data while performing continuous one-third octave band noise monitoring. This detailed dataset has been taken at two homes near a wind farm in conjunction with continuous local weather measurements. The aim of this study is to determine whether annoyance is more closely linked to overall sound pressure level, low frequency noise, infrasound, local wind speed or wind farm output power. It is worth noting that in their previous study, the authors [7] examined whether amplitude modulation is related to personal annoyance. The results of [7] showed significant level variation was present in the home however; the degree of modulation was relatively uniform with annoyance. For the current study, analysis showed amplitude modulation was not present in the signals recorded in the homes so this can not be a factor controlling annoyance.

A New Method to Evaluate Odour Annoyance Potential

Abstract: Nowadays olfactory discomfort is one of the most important factors of well-being. Different methods exist to calculate a discomfort indicator, but these indicators are based on one year human observations. However, only few methods are able to give information on concentration and acceptability of odours. These values are rarely combined to build an annoyance potential for odorous sources. In this paper, a new method is proposed for the evaluation of odours acceptability. In this method the odour concentration determination (according to the EN 13725) is followed by odour acceptability determination. The measurement of acceptability is realised at different concentrations just above the threshold at which all panel members detect the odour. An extrapolation is done to obtain the acceptability of the sample at the real concentration. A potential of annoyance is calculated by multiplying odour concentration and acceptability. In the last part of this paper, three examples are given to illustrate the interest of annoyance potential. Two deal with environmental odours (composting and rendering) to identify the most impacting sources. The third one concerns building materials.

Valuing road noise for residents in Hong Kong

Abstract: This study estimates the willingness-to-pay value for a one dB(A) change over a range of initial noise levels for a sample population in Hong Kong. It establishes a protocol for estimating the willingness-to-pay values by first establishing an annoyance–dB relationship. The protocol takes into account the characteristics that the probability of being annoyed at a particular level varied with the initial objective noise level, and the annoyance–dB relationship varied for a range of initial annoyance level. The study shows that household income level and initial annoyance levels exert considerable influences on the individual’s willingness-to-pay values. However, age and educational level were found not to exert any significant influence on individual’s willingness-to-pay values.