Estimation of the effects of aircraft noise on residential satisfaction

This study assesses the effects of aircraft noise on residential satisfaction, an important indicator of subjective well-being. A structural equation model is specified that estimates the relationships between objective variables, noise annoyance variables and residential satisfaction. Secondary data-analysis is used to estimate the model. The survey was conducted in 1996/1997 among the population living within a 25-km radius of Amsterdam Schiphol, the largest airport in the Netherlands. The effect of aircraft noise annoyance is found to be relatively small. In addition, the objective level of aircraft noise exposure is found to be a better predictor of residential satisfaction than its subjective counterpart. The most important determinants of residential satisfaction are found to be road traffic noise annoyance, age and neighbor noise annoyance.     

Simultaneous internalization of traffic congestion and noise exposure costs

This study elaborates on the interrelation of external effects, in particular road traffic congestion and noise. An agent-based simulation framework is used to compute and internalize user-specific external congestion effects and noise exposures. The resulting user equilibrium corresponds to an approximation of the system optimum. For traffic congestion and noise, single objective optimization is compared with multiple objective optimization. The simulation-based optimization approach is applied to the real-world case study of the Greater Berlin area. The results reveal a negative correlation between congestion and noise. Nevertheless, the multiple objective optimization yields a simultaneous reduction in congestion and noise. During peak times, congestion is the more relevant external effect, whereas, during the evening, night and morning, noise is the more relevant externality. Thus, a key element for policy making is to follow a dynamic approach, i.e. to temporally change the incentives. During off-peak times, noise should be reduced by concentrating traffic flows along main roads, i.e. inner-city motorways. In contrast, during peak times, congestion is reduced by shifting transport users from the inner-city motorway to smaller roads which, however, may have an effect on other externalities.     

The effects of information bias and riding frequency on noise annoyance to a new railway extension in Hong Kong

We investigate how two non-acoustic factors, information bias and riding frequency, can affect the annoyance response of an urban population to noise created by a new railway line. The study shows that information bias is asymmetrical. Respondents receiving only information on positive measures taken by the authority to reduce noise emission are more tolerant of the noise impact, but those receiving only critical views tend to be more annoyed because they feel that not all measures to reduce noise have been employed. Additionally people who use the line frequently are more tolerant to the noise impact than those who do not. Information bias seems to have a temporary masking effect over riding frequency lasting for a few weeks after railway opening. This suggest that whilst free flow of information provided by the authority can help alleviate annoyance response, encouraging the people affected to make use of the new infrastructure may be useful to reduce public resistance and noise annoyance.     

Environmental noise inequity in the city of Barcelona

Environmental noise is a growing concern for urban planners and public health experts. Continuous noise exposure has implications for people’s physical and mental health. Urban planning strategies are also involved in the need for regular noise assessments within urban areas. The objective of this study is to evaluate the exposure to noise of vulnerable population groups in the city of Barcelona, and to determine whether they are affected by an environmental inequity regarding this nuisance. Assessment of noise levels was performed by two methods of analysis—real measures and simulation—in order to build the noise database at block level for the 10 districts of the city. The results obtained by various statistical tests and spatial regression analysis show that children and low-income individuals are not affected by environmental inequity. On the other hand, we found a positive relationship between noise levels and the other groups considered: namely, the unemployed and people over age 65.     

Valuing road noise for residents in Hong Kong

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.     

Air traffic assignment to reduce population noise exposure using activity-based approach

Aircraft noise has been regarded as one of the major environmental issues related to air transport. Many airports have introduced a variety of measures to reduce its impact. Several air traffic assignment strategies have been proposed in order to allocate noise more wisely. Even though each decision regarding the assignment of aircraft to routes should consider population exposure to noise, none of the air traffic assignment strategies has addressed daily migrations of population and number of people exposed to noise. The aim of this research is to develop a mathematical model and a heuristic algorithm that could assign aircraft to departure and arrival routes so that number of people exposed to noise is as low as possible, taking into account temporal and spatial variations in population in an airport’s vicinity. The approach was demonstrated on Belgrade airport to show the benefits of the proposed model. Numerical example showed that population exposure to noise could be reduced significantly by applying the proposed air traffic assignment model. As a consequence of the proposed air traffic assignment, overall fuel consumption increased by less than 1%.     

Transportation planning and quiet natural areas preservation: Aircraft overflights noise assessment in a National Park

Global transportation growth causes several disproportionate impacts on the environment as, for instance, noise pollution which is related to negative effects on human health but also to quiet natural areas decline and biodiversity loss. Besides, sound is a component of ecosystems severely threatened by transportation noise disturbance which is related to negative effects on ecosystem functions. This study deals with aircraft noise impact on natural environments from a multiple innovative perspective. It complementarily combines: noise modeling, field measurements, soundscape audibility, human perception and spatial pattern tools for assessing the chronic growing outdoor noise pollution of ecosystems at landscape scale. Firstly, noticeable soundscape degradation from aircraft overflights has been found causing severe acoustic fragmentation and disruptions in the quietness of a national park in Spain (European Union). Air traffic caused sound pressure levels to increase by approximately 8 decibels from natural ambient levels. Secondly, spatial pattern tools together with noise mapping have been found to be useful in providing decision support for decisions-making through anthropogenic noise impact assessment on the natural environment. Finally, public opinion did not perceive aircraft noise-disruption as being as relevant as that quantified by technical procedures. Although 82% of visitors agree that anthropogenic noise pollution may negatively impact on conservation.     

Living with aircraft noise: Airport proximity,aviation noise and subjective wellbeing in England

Airport expansion is an issue of intense public debate due to the potential impacts on climate change and the quality of life of affected local communities. This paper is the first study to analyse the relationships between airports and multiple subjective wellbeing measures, by merging national-level population statistics with noise measurement maps for seventeen English airports. The presence of daytime aviation noise was found to consistently negatively impact on five subjective wellbeing measures. We found a marginal negative association with every additional decibel of aircraft noise. We found no significant association between wellbeing and living within night-time noise contours or living in close airport proximity. We conclude that living under air traffic flight paths has a negative effect on peoples’ overall and momentary wellbeing, equivalent to around half the effect of being a smoker for some wellbeing measures. The subjective wellbeing method findings support wider revealed preference literature showing lower market demand in areas affected by aviation noise.     

A traffic noise model for road intersections in the city of Cartagena de Indias,Colombia

Road traffic noise models are fundamental tools for designing and implementing appropriate prevention plans to minimize and control noise levels in urban areas. The objective of this study is to develop a traffic noise model to simulate the average equivalent sound pressure level at road intersections based on traffic flow and site characteristics, in the city of Cartagena de Indias (Cartagena), Colombia. Motorcycles are included as an additional vehicle category since they represent more than 30% of the total traffic flow and a distinctive source of noise that needs to be characterized. Noise measurements are collected using a sound level meter Type II. The data analysis leads to the development of noise maps and a general mathematical model for the city of Cartagena, Colombia, which correlates the sound levels as a function of vehicle flow within road intersections. The highest noise levels were 79.7 dB(A) for the road intersection María Auxiliadora during the week (business days) and 77.7 dB(A) for the road intersection India Catalina during weekends (non-business days). Although traffic and noise are naturally related, the intersections with higher vehicle flow did not have the highest noise levels. The roadway noise for these intersections in the city of Cartagena exceeds current limit standards. The roadway noise model is able to satisfactorily predict noise emissions for road intersections in the city of Cartagena, Colombia.     

Airport capacity increase via the use of braking profiles

Many airports are encountering the problem of insufficient capacity, which is particularly severe in periods of increased traffic. A large number of elements influence airport capacity, but one of the most important is runway occupancy time. This time depends on many factors, including how the landing roll procedure is performed. The procedure usually does not include the objective to minimize the runway occupancy time. This paper presents an analysis which shows that the way of braking during landing roll has an essential impact on runway throughput and thus on airport capacity. For this purpose, the landing roll simulator (named ACPENSIM) was created. It uses Petri nets and is a convenient tool for dynamic analysis of aircraft movement on the runway with given input parameters and a predetermined runway exit. Simulation experiments allowed to create a set of nominal braking profiles that have different objective functions: minimizing the runway occupancy time, minimizing noise, minimizing tire wear, maximizing passenger comfort and maximizing airport capacity as a whole. The experiments show that there is great potential to increase airport capacity by optimizing the braking procedure. It has been shown that by using the proposed braking profiles it is possible to reduce the runway occupancy time even by 50%.     

An enhanced SPSA algorithm for the calibration of Dynamic Traffic Assignment models

Simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA) is an efficient and well established optimization method that approximates gradients from successive objective function evaluations. It is especially attractive for high-dimensional problems and has been successfully applied to the calibration of Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) models. This paper presents an enhanced SPSA algorithm, called Weighted SPSA (W-SPSA), which incorporates the information of spatial and temporal correlation in a traffic network to limit the impact of noise and improve convergence and robustness. W-SPSA appears to outperform the original SPSA algorithm by reducing the noise generated by uncorrelated measurements in the gradient approximation, especially for DTA models of sparsely correlated large-scale networks and a large number of time intervals. Comparisons between SPSA and W-SPSA have been performed through rigorous synthetic tests and the application of W-SPSA for the calibration of real world DTA networks is demonstrated with a case study of the entire expressway network in Singapore.     

Tyre/road noise damping characteristics using nomographs and fundamental vibroacoustical relationships

Several studies have successfully developed laboratory and field measurement techniques to estimate tyre/road noise damping characteristics. However, laboratory–field noise correlations of pavement types in the form of nomographs is essential to cognize the pavements’ acoustical properties from a practical perspective. A toolkit that readily provides field tyre/road noise intensity of different pavement materials is needed. Thus, the main objective of this study was to develop nomographs with relationships for tyre/road noise versus pavement materials’ viscoelastic–vibroacoustical properties. Isothermal and isochronal nomographs of phase angle–tyre/road noise as toolkits were developed based upon well-established phase angle and noise intensities typical of mixtures, making the nomograph correlations very authentic, realistic, and novel along with benefit to predict tyre/road noise at any desired temperature and traffic speed (or frequency) combination. This study is envisaged to benefit in the discernment of road materials’ damping capabilities from vibroacoustical and field noise–viscoelastic relation aspects.     

The effect of road traffic noise on the prices of residential property – A case study of the polish city of Olsztyn

The key factors that determine the prices of real estate are location, technical standard of property as well as the local environment. In urban agglomerations, road traffic noise has a considerable impact on the purchasing decisions made by apartment buyers. This is a widespread problem in Central-Eastern Europe. The main objective of this study was to verify the working hypothesis that apartment prices are correlated with traffic noise levels in Olsztyn, the capital city of the Region of Warmia and Mazury in north-eastern Poland.The study was carried out in four principal stages. Firstly, traffic noise intensity was determined for apartments (objects of real estate transactions concluded in 2013), based on an acoustic map for the city of Olsztyn. The map was developed in line with the provisions of Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 June 2002 relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise. Secondly, the values of the Noise Depreciation Sensitivity Index (NDSI) were calculated. NDSI determines the percentage change in property prices per dB increase in noise levels. The distribution of unit prices of apartments was mapped relative to noise levels, and the relationships between the analyzed variables were assessed. Thirdly, linear correlations between the unit prices of apartments and noise levels were analyzed. The strength and direction of relationships between the analyzed parameters were determined based on Pearson’s correlation coefficient. In the last stage, the distribution of the unit prices of apartments was mapped by ordinary kriging, a geostatistical estimation method. The research hypothesis was confirmed by comparing the spatial distribution of traffic noise levels measured in stage 1 with the spatial distribution of apartment prices.     

Hierarchal assessment of noise pollution in urban areas – A case study

Noise pollution in urban areas has many harmful effects on the citizens. There are varieties of noise generation sources of which the traffic noise could be a major source. The point which is perhaps less noticed is that sound level is not the only parameter to indicate the extent and intensity of noise pollution. Situation of urban land uses, distribution of population centers and types of passages can deeply affect the concern on this environmental issue but not with a similar ratio. This article presents an overlaying technique to define noise prone areas using all different factors involved. A case study was carried out in the District 14 of Tehran Metropolitan City where there are busy streets and highways. For this purpose, the share of each criterion in noise pollution intensity was determined using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Afterwards, the map layers were overlaid based upon the relative importance of the criteria to get the final map on which the noise prone areas are specified. The developed method could be used as a tool for indirect estimation of noise pollution by which instead of direct measurement of the equivalent sound level, it would be possible to predict noise susceptible areas considering the most important influential factors.     

Development and implementation of the areawide Dynamic ROad traffic NoisE (DRONE) simulator

This paper discusses the areawide Dynamic ROad traffic NoisE (DRONE) simulator, and its implementation as a tool for noise abatement policy evaluation. DRONE involves integrating a road traffic noise estimation model with a traffic simulator to estimate road traffic noise in urban networks. An integrated traffic simulation-noise estimation model provides an interface for direct input of traffic flow properties from simulation model to noise estimation model that in turn estimates the noise on a spatial and temporal scale. The output from DRONE is linked with a geographical information system for visual representation of noise levels in the form of noise contour maps.     

Geoinformatic prediction of motorway noise on buildings in 3D GIS

This study predicts and displays the impacts of motorway traffic noise on a nearby building, utilizing a motorway traffic noise model in combination with geoinformatic technique. Two- and three-dimensional geographical information systems are used to visualize noise impacts in the form of three-dimensional noise contour on the building and ground surface. The results offer a clear, visual display of impact levels from roadway noise in the form of noise contour overlay on vicinity area and building blocks along the roadway in three-dimensional form. The area can be turned and investigated at different angles.     

城市轨道交通工程施工噪声污染管控技术研究

城市轨道建设的施工阶段作为整个工程中对周边地区负面影响较大的阶段,对其噪声进行治理有着十分重要的意义。本文通过研究城市轨道交通工程的建设过程,重点阐述地铁施工过程中产生的噪声污染情况,通过模型预测施工期噪声影响,从技术和管理层面分别开展施工期降噪技术研究,研究地铁施工可采用的噪声控制措施。     

Rescheduling through stop-skipping in dense railway systems

Based on the analysis of the railway system in the Paris region in France, this paper presents a rescheduling problem in which stops on train lines can be skipped and services are retimed to recover when limited disturbances occur. Indeed, in such mass transit systems, minor disturbances tend to propagate and generate larger delays through the shared use of resources, if no action is quickly taken. An integrated Integer Linear Programming model is presented whose objective function minimizes both the recovery time and the waiting time of passengers. Additional criteria related to the weighted number of train stops that are skipped are included in the objective function. Rolling-stock constraints are also taken into account to propose a feasible plan. Computational experiments on real data are conducted to show the impact of rescheduling decisions depending on key parameters such as the duration of the disturbances and the minimal turning time between trains. The trade-off between the different criteria in the objective function is also illustrated and discussed.     

Costs and benefits of US aviation noise land-use policies

Aircraft noise affects human health and welfare. One method US airports use to mitigate the impact of noise on nearby residents is through sound insulation and residential land acquisition projects. Costs of residential insulation and acquisition projects are taken from federal grant summaries while the benefits of noise reduction are calculated as the combined willingness-to-pay for abatement and direct and indirect costs of illness from hypertension, myocardial infarction, and stroke. We show that the average cost of sound insulation projects is $15,600 per person affected while that of land acquisition is $48,900 per person affected. We find that for only in 15% of projects do the benefits to residents from willingness-to-pay for reduction and reduced risk of mortality and morbidity exceed the costs of sound insulation for residences exposed to 65 dB Day Night Level (DNL) of noise. Our estimates suggest that noise insulation projects are more cost-effective than fleet wide mandatory aircraft retirement.     

Traffic noise and traffic light control

An optimal control problem of traffic light duration is considered. The traffic noise level is introduced as a state variable in a dynamical optimization problem. A closed loop control system is designed which influences the green duration of the lights according to the equivalent noise level. Real time considerations lead to sub-optimal control implementation. This control policy decreases the noise levels at intensive traffic intersections. The traffic lights adapt their duration according to the noise pollution. Simulation and experimental results are discussed.