Urban road traffic noise monitoring, mapping, modelling, and mitigation: A thematic review

Abstract

This article analyses the most recent studies on urban traffic noise. About 67 relevant articles on urban road traffic noise and its mitigation strategies were preferred for a critical review. Only 5.97% of items describe how to monitor and record the noise measurement for urban roads, while 7.46% of articles enumerated urban traffic noise pollution exposure. 29.85% of articles proposed a model to evaluate noise reduction effects and predict the noise level. Also, many articles reported noise map generation and its analysis. 56.71% of articles described the noise mitigation strategies in detail, concerning noise control by green vegetation, land use planning, low noise tire and pavement material, noise reduction through façade shielding. Noise pollution standards are being breached in all areas. There is a need for the proper implementation of rules and regulations. Therefore, noise mitigation strategies such as designing noise barriers and other noise control materials are needed. Finally, it is summarized that economic and low-cost optimized noise pollution mitigation strategies like ingeniously made noise barriers, vegetation and landscaping are need of the hour for urban areas of developing countries.

Guidelines for Environmental Noise Management in Developing Countries

“…• Limited existence of baseline data; poor quality data; lack of standard operating procedures for monitoring; poor quality control and assurance; deficiencies in the maintenance of monitoring systems; lack of monitoring of sound pressure levels in urban and peri-urban areas [55,56].…”

Traffic Noise Reduction Strategy in a Large City and an Analysis of Its Effect

“…In order to assess the levels of noise emitted in an urban area, noise mapping is widely accepted as one of the most meaningful and popular approaches in the research community [24][25][26][27][28]. A precise noise mapping can provide the detailed spatial noise level distribution of a certain area with multiple noise sources and temporal intervals.…”

“…With these advantages, noise mapping can be applied as the first step toward the calculation of populations exposed to the noise levels in a specific area; then, some applicable noise mitigation strategies, such as noise barriers, vegetation, and landscaping, can be proposed to reduce the impact of noise. Over recent years, numerous efforts were made to develop traffic noise maps through numerical modeling based on traffic flow parameters and a geographic information system (GIS) [25]. Zhao et al [29] proposed a method for three-dimensional (3D) road traffic noise mapping with unstructured surface meshes of buildings and roads.…”

“…Therefore, it is essential to take traffic noise issues into account in urban planning, particularly for urban renewal plans in old cities, which usually have high densities in terms of population and residential buildings. To achieve this, noise mapping can serve as a useful tool for evaluating different noise mitigation strategies or for proposing optimized soundscape designs to reduce the impact of noises emitted by major sources [25]. Nowadays, noise barriers are globally applied in residential areas lying adjacent to major roads, such as highways or expressways, to reduce the traffic noise emissions [35].…”