Methodology and Acoustic Measurement Campaign of Road Noise: Case of the Agdal District – Rabat City

Abstract

In this work, sound pressure levels of road traffic on about twenty selected locations in the Agdal District in Rabat City were carried out. The traffic consists mainly of light vehicles with similar characteristics. All measurements were performed in 1/3 octave with an integration step of 20 ms during the period of 15 days from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. This large amount of data allowed the reconstruction of the spectrograms using a script written in Mathematica language. An interesting result obtained concerns the basic interval required to have a sufficiently representative equivalent level. Indeed, the calculations have shown that about 20 min of measurements are sufficient. This confirms the result already mentioned in our previous work. This result will therefore make it possible to optimize the measurement period during the campaign, in particular for locations where the number of locations is high or the quantity of recordings is large. Frequency analysis revealed spectrum similarities between two locations of different traffic intensities, but of similar composition. This observation is also observed over the different periods of the day (morning, afternoon, evening). In addition, an estimate of the inconvenience felt by local residents was made on the basis of the L den estimated from the measured L 50 . It emerges that, for the majority of the locations subject to the measurements, the percentages of very inconvenienced and inconvenienced people are above 20% and 30% respectively. This result corroborates the results of our previous survey.

Road Traffic Noise Mapping Based on Field Measurements in Location That Do Not Have a Standardized Model in Algeria

“…The findings of this study align with previous research conducted by (Alam et al, 2021), (Alam et al, 2022), and (Ammar et al, 2023). Our research, which involved mapping noise levels during both winter and summer periods, underscores the prevalence of road noise as a dominant factor in the Champs de Manoeuvre housing estate.…”