Noise Events Monitoring for Urban and Mobility Planning in Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany

Abstract

Noise pollution is a critical factor and it has an important impact on public health, with the relationship between road traffic noise (RTN) and several illnesses in urban areas of particular concern. Andorra is currently developing a national strategy regarding noise pollution in their urban environments. The Ministry of Environment, Agriculture and Sustainability is trying to to identify, monitor, map and model the effects of noise pollution and design mitigation policies to reduce the impact in certain priority areas. This analysis should take into account the existence of different types of anomalous noise events (ANEs) present in the street, e.g., horns, people talking, music, and other events that coexist with RTN, to characterize the soundscape of each of the locations. This paper presents a preliminary analysis considering both the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and the duration of the ANEs to evaluate their presence in urban areas in the three different locations in Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany. The experiments conducted required a 10-h recording campaign distributed in the three locations under study, which was evaluated on two different days, one during the week and the other on the weekend. Afterwards, the data were carefully labeled and the SNR of each event was evaluated to determine the potential impact of the four categories under study: vehicles, works, city life and people.

Descriptors and Indicators of the Acoustic Environment in Andorra and Escaldes-Engordany

“…This section reviews the results of the preliminary evaluation of the PA over the data collected in Andorra La Vella and Escaldes-Engordany [8]. As we can observe in Figures 1 and 2, which correspond to the PA distribution per day and per typology of noise and the PA distribution per location and per typology of noise (respectively), the higher results are depicted for traffic and work (when looking at the noise typology), and location A is the most annoying of the three locations where the recordings were conducted.…”

“…Moreover, all sounds were grouped as (1) traffic sounds, (2) works on city infrastructure, (3) city sounds and (4) sounds made by people. The reader is referred to [8] for more details about the recording campaign and the labelling process of the data.…”

“…The Actuatech Foundation and the Andorra Sustainability Observatory (OBSA) had a clear interest in determining the type of noise that existed in the streets of Andorra la Vella and Escaldes-Engordany [8]. With this idea in mind, some time ago we started a joint project to observe and characterise the different types of noise existing at three specific points in the two cities, with the aim of categorising all the audible sounds at these points into four categories: Traffic, People, City and Works [8]. For this purpose, samples of raw acoustic data were recorded at these locations for two days to be studied and labelled, as well as the final part of visualization of the types of noise [9].…”

Mapping the Sound Environment of Andorra and Escaldes-Engordany by Means of a 3D City Model Platform

“…Following the concept of the CityScope Andorra, in collaboration with La Salle Campus Barcelona and the Observatory of Sustainability of Andorra (OBSA), the Actuatech Foundation is working on a project to analyze the noise pollution that is currently affecting the population of Andorra and to find a way to minimize any harmful effects it may produce. An initial study [33] characterized and classified the topology and intensity of noise events in strategic points of Andorra, with raw acoustic data collected with a digital recorder, while this work is centered on the initial exploration of data visualization to provide citizens and public administrations with a general overview of the noise pollution situation. The Andorran Government and the municipality of Escaldes-Engordany aim to create a real-time monitoring system together with several sources' data integration, in order to increase the knowledge of the urban dynamics data for future policies' design.…”

Preface: New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution

“…Not all kind of noise is considered in the maps; thus, Alsina-Pagès et al [14] studied different types of anomalous noise events present in the street in order to characterize them, for both soundscape and maps integration. The analysis has been performed considering both the Signal-to-Noise Ratio and the duration of the anomalous events to evaluate their presence in urban areas in Andorra.…”