Aircraft noise prediction capability development: An overview of flight profile creation

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has led to the implementation of remote work as one of the safe management measures at workplaces. Consequently, most of the population has been staying home in the daytime-a period when the volume of air traffic may be higher. For residents staying near to an airport, their work concentration may be adversely affected by aircraft noise, not to mention that prolonged exposure could cause health problems. Hence, it is crucial to consider how aircraft noise can be predicted using noise maps. Before any noise management measures can be assessed for feasibility, aircraft noise prediction is first necessary to unveil how residential areas are affected. This paper presents an overview of the aircraft noise prediction capability that has been developed based on ECAC Doc. 29. The computation procedure involves flight profile creation, sound propagation physics correction, and noise map generation. The scope of this paper is limited to flight profile creation. Critical output parameters were compared against that of SoundPLAN. Results showed that the developed code can accurately compute both departure and arrival flight profiles. © ICA 2022.All rights reserved

Chronic sleep disturbance among adult Canadians: Associations and implications to the evaluation of noise impacts under Canada's Impact Assessment Act

The Canadian Perspectives on Environmental Noise Survey was completed online by 6647 randomly selected Canadians 18 years of age and older between April 12 and May 25, 2021. The survey objective was to explore attitudes, perceptions, and expectations toward environmental noise in rural and non-rural Canada. The questionnaire assessed self-reported high sleep disturbance (HSD) in the previous year, at home. The prevalence of HSD was 7.8% overall. A list of potential sources of sleep disturbance was provided to the full sample, where 6.1%, 5.2%, and 3.0% reported HSD by noisy neighbors, road traffic noise and indoor noise, respectively. Stress/anxiety or worrying about something was selected most frequently at 12.9%. Finally, 7.6% and 5.5% reported pain/illness and partner's sleep disturbance, respectively, as sources of HSD. Reported HSD was significantly higher among respondents below 55 years of age, females, lower income groups, unemployed respondents, those on paid leave (sick, maternity, disability), and living in an urban area. Expectations of quiet, perceiving nighttime noise to have increased over time, high noise sensitivity, hearing and being highly annoyed by road traffic noise was also associated with an increased prevalence of reporting HSD. In contrast to hearing impairment and heart disease (including high blood pressure);rated physical health, mental health, anxiety/depression, and reporting a sleep disorder, were associated with increased HSD. The perceived affects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and annoyance toward environmental and indoor noise also influenced HSD. In the fully adjusted multivariate logistic regression model, the effect of age, gender, changes in nighttime noise, road traffic noise annoyance, noise sensitivity and sleep disorder remained statistically significant. The univariate and multivariate models showed a similar prevalence of HSD between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. Results are discussed in relation to the provision of advice on sleep and health under Canada's Impact Assessment Act. © 2023

Probability Analysis of a Stochastic Non-Autonomous SIQRC Model with Inference

When an individual with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 is quarantined or isolated, the virus can linger for up to an hour in the air. We developed a mathematical model for COVID-19 by adding the point where a person becomes infectious and begins to show symptoms of COVID-19 after being exposed to an infected environment or the surrounding air. It was proven that the proposed stochastic COVID-19 model is biologically well-justifiable by showing the existence, uniqueness, and positivity of the solution. We also explored the model for a unique global solution and derived the necessary conditions for the persistence and extinction of the COVID-19 epidemic. For the persistence of the disease, we observed that Rs0>1, and it was noticed that, for Rs<1, the COVID-19 infection will tend to eliminate itself from the population. Supplementary graphs representing the solutions of the model were produced to justify the obtained results based on the analysis. This study has the potential to establish a strong theoretical basis for the understanding of infectious diseases that re-emerge frequently. Our work was also intended to provide general techniques for developing the Lyapunov functions that will help the readers explore the stationary distribution of stochastic models having perturbations of the nonlinear type in particular.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF CRUISE SHIPS TO THE SOUND EMISSION OF A HARBOUR

In recent years, the growth of cruise tourism has often been at the centre of controversy due to the environmental impact, especially for those harbours that, for historical and urban planning reasons, are in close contact with urban areas of particular value or under cultural heritage protection. The deadlock of cruise activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency created the conditions for observing the effects of the substantial disappearance of a specific sound source from the harbours of many cities. This paper presents the evaluation of the contribution of large cruise ships to the overall noise emitted by a specialized cruise harbour and the consequences of their absence on the urban acoustic climate. © International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV), 2022.

Environmental Noise Annoyance Trends in Selected Locations in Bratislava

The rapid development in traffic density and the economic transformation since 1989 has brought new problems concerning road traffic noise in Slovakia. The aim is to follow the time trends of noise annoyance in monitored localities in Bratislava at time intervals of 10, 20, and 30 years. We used the validated methodology for subjective assessment of noise annoyance in young and healthy individuals, as well as a method of objectification by direct measurement of sound levels. Respondents (n=3,675) were university students, living in the exposed and control dormitories representing a homogenous sample. The sharp increase in traffic noise burden in the exposed area was found at the first 10-year interval (1989-1999) (LAeq=67.5 dB). A slight decrease occurred in 2019 up to LAeq=63.9 dB and during lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic it dropped to LAeq =62.5 dB. A sharp increase in road traffic noise annoyance was observed in the first 10-year interval (ORMH=2.56 (95 % CI=1.93-3.42) vs 6.01 (95% CI=4.97-7.95) with a slightly decreasing trend in 2020-2021. An increase in noise annoyance from entertainment facilities was observed as well. Despite a slightly declining trend, road traffic noise annoyance is still an important issue and there is a need for preventive measures to reduce such exposure in residential areas. © 2022 Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering. All rights reserved.

CURRENT DEVELOPMENT OF AN AIRCRAFT NOISE PREDICTION ALGORITHM: AN OVERVIEW

Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has been widely adopted as one of the safe management measures at workplaces. The rapid advancement in communications technology has enabled work to still be delivered efficiently and effectively through virtually. With remote work being a norm in workplace management, housing estates are expected to remain largely occupied during office hours. For residents who are staying near to an aerodrome, their work concentration may be affected by aircraft noise pollution. Prolonged aircraft noise exposure could have negative effects in the built environment. Therefore, it is timely to emphasise the importance of aircraft noise prediction and management at the outset of urban planning. This paper presents the current development of an aircraft noise prediction algorithm, which will eventually serve as a tool to study the effects and control measures of aircraft noise. © International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration (IIAV), 2022.

The Role of Traffic Volume on Sound Pressure Level Reduction before and during COVID-19 Lockdown Measures-A Case Study in Bochum, Germany.

During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, sound pressure levels (SPL) decreased because of lockdown measures all over the world. This study aims to describe SPL changes over varying lockdown measure timeframes and estimate the role of traffic on SPL variations. To account for different COVID-19 lockdown measures, the timeframe during the pandemic was segmented into four phases. To analyze the association between a-weighted decibels (dB(A)) and lockdown phases relative to the pre-lockdown timeframe, we calculated a linear mixed model, using 36,710 h of recording time. Regression coefficients depicting SPL changes were compared, while the model was subsequently adjusted for wind speed, rainfall, and traffic volume. The relative adjusted reduction of during pandemic phases to pre-pandemic levels ranged from -0.99 dB(A) (CI: -1.45; -0.53) to -0.25 dB(A) (CI: -0.96; 0.46). After controlling for traffic volume, we observed little to no reduction (-0.16 dB(A) (CI: -0.77; 0.45)) and even an increase of 0.75 dB(A) (CI: 0.18; 1.31) during the different lockdown phases. These results showcase the major role of traffic regarding the observed reduction. The findings can be useful in assessing measures to decrease noise pollution for necessary future population-based prevention.

Unintended impacts of the Open Streets program on noise complaints in New York City.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, several cities allocated more public spaces for physical activity and recreation instead of road transport through Open Streets. This policy locally reduces traffic and provides experimental testbeds for healthier cities. However, it may also generate unintended impacts. For instance, Open Streets may impact the levels of exposure to environmental noise but there are no studies assessing these unintended impacts. OBJECTIVES: Using noise complaints from New York City (NYC) as a proxy of annoyance caused by environmental noise, we estimated associations at the census tract level between same-day proportion of Open Streets in a census tract and noise complaints in NYC. METHODS: Using data from summer 2019 (pre-implementation) and summer 2021 (post-implementation), we fit regressions to estimate the association between census tract-level proportion of Open Streets and daily noise complaints, with random effects to account for within-tract correlation and natural splines to allow non-linearity in the estimated association. We accounted for temporal trends and other potential confounders, such as population density and poverty rate. RESULTS: In adjusted analyses, daily street/sidewalk noise complaints were nonlinearly associated with an increasing proportion of Open Streets. Specifically, compared to the mean proportion of Open Streets in a census tract (0.11%), 5% of Open Streets had a 1.09 (95% CI: 0.98, 1.20) and 10% had a 1.21 (95% CI: 1.04, 1.42) times higher rate of street/sidewalk noise complaints. Our results were robust to the choice of data source for identifying Open Streets. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that Open Streets in NYC may be linked to an increase in street/sidewalk noise complaints. These results highlight the necessity to reinforce urban policies with a careful analysis for potential unintended impacts to optimize and maximize the benefits of these policies.

Cardiovascular consequences of aircraft noise exposure.

The results from epidemiological studies suggest that environmental noise including aircraft, railway, road traffic, wind turbine, and leisure-related noise is a growing public health concern. According to the WHO, at least 100 million people in the European Union are affected by traffic noise levels above the WHO-recommended thresholds. Environmental noise can adversely affect physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. Chronic low-level noise exposure typical for most environmental sources is associated with psychophysiological stress causing non-auditory or indirect noise effects leading ultimately to cardiovascular diseases. Among all environmental noise sources, aircraft noise is considered the most annoying, and its leading mechanism of action is autonomic system activation such as increases in heart rate and blood pressure. Previously, we observed that long-term exposure to aircraft noise was associated with increased diastolic blood pressure, arterial stiffness (as assessed by pulse wave velocity), and impaired left ventricular diastolic function. All mentioned above effects are early, subclinical, and potentially reversible changes which preceded late noise effects in the cardiovascular system, that is, established cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and heart failure. However, even a short-term reduction in aircraft noise exposure as observed during the COVID-19 lockdown may reverse these negative effects on arterial stiffness and blood pressure and may decrease the prevalence of insomnia. In this review, we aimed to critically discuss our obtained results considering recent studies on the influence of aircraft noise (and other traffic noises) on cardiovascular diseases in the context of the WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region.

Determination of Annual Environmental Noise Indicators Using a Series of Short-Term Measurements

Completely reliable annual values of environmental noise indicators can be obtained only through continuous annual noise measurements. This paper examines the justification of using a series of short-term measurements to determine the annual values of environmental noise indicators. The examination involves the application of a proposed measurement program to the results of continuous annual noise monitoring at two locations in the city of Niš, Serbia, in which road traffic is the dominant noise source. Monitoring results include the period when the state of emergency was in effect because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The obtained results indicate that using the proposed program is fully justified if the goal is to define annual environmental noise indicator values for specific cases only. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Remote work: Aircraft noise implications, prediction, and management in the built environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly changed workplace management. Most workplaces have adopted the work-from-home policy to minimize the risk of community spread. Consequently, housing estates remain largely occupied during office hours. Since some housing estates are situated in the vicinity of an airport, noise pollution resulted from the takeoff and landing of aircraft is now more noticed by residents, causing annoyance. This problem would be most acute for those located directly under the flight path. Before the pandemic, such aircraft operations had lower effect on the residents because most of them were not at home but at workplaces. Evidently, it is timely that more emphasis should now be placed during urban planning to predict and minimize aircraft noise in the built environment. This article first defines the aircraft noise metrics commonly used to assess environmental impact. Preceded by an overview of how aircraft noise affects the built environment, this article reviews how various aircraft noise prediction models have been used in urban planning. Lastly, this article reviews how aircraft noise can be managed for better acoustic comfort of the residents. Anticipating the adoption of hybrid work arrangement moving forward, this article aims to provide urban planning professionals with an avenue to understand how aircraft noise can negatively affect the built environment, which, in turn, justify why prediction and management of aircraft noise should be emphasized from the outset of urban planning.

Annoyance toward transportation and construction noise in rural suburban and urban regions across Canada

The Canadian Perspectives on Environmental Noise Survey investigated expectations and attitudes toward environmental noise in rural/remote, suburban and urban regions across Canada. A 26-item online questionnaire was completed by 6647 randomly selected Canadians 18 years of age and older between April 12, 2021 and May 25, 2021. Stepwise multivariate logistic regression modelled the odds of reporting very or extreme (i.e., high) noise annoyance toward road traffic, aircraft/helicopter, trains and construction noise. Five variables were common to all noise sources;1) reporting the living area as very quiet, calm and relaxing;2) sleep disturbance in general;3) sleep disturbance attributed to road traffic noise;4) noise sensitivity;and 5) reporting worsened annoyance toward environmental noise due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Duration of residency, perceived changes in nighttime and daytime noise over time, expectations of quiet, other specific causes of sleep disturbance, hearing impairment, road traffic audibility, and the impact of the pandemic on physical health, mental health, stress and indoor noise annoyance, each impacted the odds of reporting high annoyance to some, but not all modelled sources. Gender, rated physical and mental health (in general), anxiety or depression, overall well-being, and Indigenous status did not enter any of the multivariate models. Results are discussed in relation to the provision of advice on noise under Canada's Impact Assessment Act.

Urban Soundscape Assessment by Visually Impaired People: First Methodological Approach in Granada (Spain)

Soundscape assessments by citizens are starting to emerge as a common practice, normally carried out in context by means of soundwalks along selected paths with volunteers. However, when such assessments are carried out, either in situ or in laboratory experiments, visually impaired citizens are not usually involved. To address this question, three soundwalks were carried out in 2020 in the city of Granada, in southern Spain, with the participation of visually impaired people. In this paper, we present the lessons learnt from this research with respect to the methodology issues that have to do with soundwalking and the surveying procedures when people with limited vison are participating, the assessment results, and a comparison with a soundscape evaluation carried out in 2019 without the collaboration of visually impaired people. The results of this preliminary campaign highlight that: (1) Adapting soundscape assessment protocols from standards for visually impaired people is a methodological challenge that requires research attention;(2) Some of the different patterns in the assessment of the soundscape pleasantness between visually impaired and nonvisually impaired participants emerged;(3) The perception of quietness may differ for visually impaired people when orientation and identification are factors that play a role in the acoustic environment evaluation.

Associations between Personal Attitudes towards COVID-19 and Public Space Soundscape Assessment: An Example from Antwerp, Belgium.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the lockdown events and policies that followed, led to significant changes in the built environment and how it is experienced by people and communities. Among those, variations in the acoustic environments were some of the most noticeable in cities. This study investigated the relationships between the perception of the acoustic environment (i.e., soundscape) and different personal factors such as attitudes towards the pandemic and noise sensitivity, by performing a survey with 109 participants in an urban green public space in Antwerp (Belgium), shortly after most restrictions issued by the government were lifted in September 2020 when the first contamination wave ended. While preliminary in nature, the results of this data collection campaign show that people actively changing their behaviors (using less public transport or cycling more) assessed the soundscapes as less vibrant/exciting. People who were more concerned about the pandemic tended to notice more natural sounds and noise from traffic on nearby local roads. This same subset also put a bigger importance on the environmental quality of the public space than in the pre-pandemic period. Noise sensitivity also played a role, as an association was found between more-than-average noise sensitive persons and those more worried regarding the pandemic. Overall, the findings of this study confirm that at least part of the people have started to perceive the public space, including its soundscape, differently since the start of the pandemic.

The Negative Impact of Noise on Adolescents' Executive Function: An Online Study in the Context of Home-Learning During a Pandemic.

UNICEF estimates that 1.6 billion children across the world have had their education impacted by COVID-19 and have attempted to continue their learning at home. With ample evidence showing a negative impact of noise on academic achievement within schools, the current pre-registered study set out to determine what aspects of the home environment might be affecting these students. Adolescents aged 11-18 took part online, with 129 adolescents included after passing a headphone screening task. They filled out a sociodemographic questionnaire, followed by a home environment and noise questionnaire. Participants then completed three executive function tasks (the Flanker, the Backward Digit Span, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test) while listening to a soundtrack of either white noise or home-like environmental noise. For purposes of analysis, based on the noise questionnaire, participants were separated into quieter and noisier homes. Results revealed that measures of the home environment significantly correlated with individual perceptions of noise and task performance. In particular, adolescents coming from noisier homes were more likely to report that they studied in a noisy room and that they were annoyed by noise when studying. In terms of noise and task performance, the Flanker task revealed that while older adolescents were more efficient overall than their younger peers, those older adolescents from noisier homes seemed to lose this advantage. Additionally, reaction times for younger adolescents from noisier homes were less impacted by accuracy compared to their peers from quieter homes, though there was no difference for the older adolescents. This evidence suggests that higher in-home noise levels lead to higher rates of annoyance and may be hindering home-learning, with both younger and older adolescents being impacted. Furthermore, the long-term effect of in-home noise on adolescent executive function task performance indicates that these findings transcend the pandemic and would influence in-school learning. Limitations and advantages of online adolescent research without researcher supervision are discussed, including sociodemographics and adapting tasks.

Cluster Analysis of Urban Acoustic Environments on Barcelona Sensor Network Data.

As cities grow in size and number of inhabitants, continuous monitoring of the environmental impact of sound sources becomes essential for the assessment of the urban acoustic environments. This requires the use of management systems that should be fed with large amounts of data captured by acoustic sensors, mostly remote nodes that belong to a wireless acoustic sensor network. These systems help city managers to conduct data-driven analysis and propose action plans in different areas of the city, for instance, to reduce citizens' exposure to noise. In this paper, unsupervised learning techniques are applied to discover different behavior patterns, both time and space, of sound pressure levels captured by acoustic sensors and to cluster them allowing the identification of various urban acoustic environments. In this approach, the categorization of urban acoustic environments is based on a clustering algorithm using yearly acoustic indexes, such as Lday, Levening, Lnight and standard deviation of Lden. Data collected over three years by a network of acoustic sensors deployed in the city of Barcelona, Spain, are used to train several clustering methods. Comparison between methods concludes that the k-means algorithm has the best performance for these data. After an analysis of several solutions, an optimal clustering of four groups of nodes is chosen. Geographical analysis of the clusters shows insights about the relation between nodes and areas of the city, detecting clusters that are close to urban roads, residential areas and leisure areas mostly. Moreover, temporal analysis of the clusters gives information about their stability. Using one-year size of the sliding window, changes in the membership of nodes in the clusters regarding tendency of the acoustic environments are discovered. In contrast, using one-month windowing, changes due to seasonality and special events, such as COVID-19 lockdown, are recognized. Finally, the sensor clusters obtained by the algorithm are compared with the areas defined in the strategic noise map, previously created by the Barcelona city council. The developed k-means model identified most of the locations found on the overcoming map and also discovered a new area.

Quieted City Sounds during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Montreal.

This paper investigates the transformation of urban sound environments during the COVID-19 pandemic in Montreal, Canada. We report on comparisons of sound environments in three sites, before, during, and after the lockdown. The project is conducted in collaboration with the Montreal festival district (Quartier des Spectacles) as part of the Sounds in the City partnership. The analyses rely on continuous acoustic monitoring of three sites. The comparisons are presented in terms of (1) energetic acoustic indicators over different periods of time (Lden, Ld, Le, Ln), (2) statistical acoustic indicators (L10, L90), and (3) hourly, daily, and weekly profiles of sound levels throughout the day. Preliminary analyses reveal sound level reductions on the order of 6-7 dB(A) during lockdown, with differences more or less marked across sites and times of the day. After lockdown, sound levels gradually increased following an incremental relaxation of confinement. Within four weeks, sound levels measurements nearly reached the pre-COVID-19 levels despite a reduced number of pedestrian activities. Long-term measurements suggest a 'new normal' that is not quite as loud without festival activities, but that is also not characterizable as quiet. The study supports reframing debates about noise control and noise management of festival areas to also consider the sounds of such areas when festival sounds are not present.

Impact of COVID-19 on environmental noise emitted from the port.

Identification of noise sources and their ranking is a crucial part of any noise abatement program. This is a particularly difficult task when a complex source, such as a seaport, is considered. COVID-19 epidemic has had a significant impact on environmental noise related to road, rail, air and ship traffic and provided a unique opportunity to observe immediate noise reduction. In order to identify the noise sources, whose reduction was most effective in reducing noise from the port area, this study compared and quantified noise emissions between the historical and epidemic periods. Environmental noise measurements from three noise monitoring stations at the port boundary were analysed. In addition, noise emissions from ship, road, rail and industry as well as meteorological data in the historical pre - COVID-19 (January 2018-February 2020) and COVID-19 (April 2020) period were analysed in detail. The characteristics of the noise sources mentioned, geographical data and noise measurements were used to develop and validate a noise model of the port area, which was used to calculate noise contour maps. Our results show that the reduction in noise levels observed at all monitoring stations coincides with the reduced shipping traffic. The A weighted equivalent sound pressure levels in the day, evening and night periods were reduced by 2.2 dB to 5.7 dB compared to the long-term averages, and the area of the 55 dB day-evening-night noise contour was reduced by 23%. Compared to the historical period, the number of people exposed to noise levels above 55 dB(A) in the day-evening-night period due to shipping and industrial activities was reduced by 20% in the COVID-19 period. Such results show that environmental noise generated by moored ships is a problem for port cities that should be regulated internationally. In addition, this paper provides precise guidance on noise emission characteristics, ship categorisation and the post-processing of long-term measurement data, taking into account wind conditions and undesired sound events, which can be applied to future research at other locations near shipping ports and used to prepare strategies for noise reduction in ports.