Comprehensive noise assessment in complex situations with more than one mode of transport

Abstract

The exposure to noise from more than one source is no rarity nowadays. In most cases the assessment of
immission load is performed for each traffic carrier individually and superposition of different sound levels is
not treated in any special way when mitigation measures are realized. Thus, health-impairing situations are not
properly resolved or even remain undetected. In order to establish a comprehensive approach for the joint
evaluation of road, railway, aircraft and shipping noise immission, we look at different test cases, which serve as
exemplary scenarios for critical noise situations. By comparing different calculation and assessment methods
(e.g. energetic sum, spectral analysis, weighted noise index, VDI 3722-2 ...) we want to give first answers to the
questions: How to calculate the overall sound level when several noise sources are present? How to consider the
diverse physiological and psychological effects of noise on people? What are possible unambiguous indicators
for triggering acoustically effective mitigation measures?