An activity-based and dynamic approach to calculate road traffic noise damages

- We use an activity-based transport model for noise exposure analysis.
- Noise exposures largely depend on the individuals' within-day dynamics.
- The inclusion of noise exposures at work/education largely affects the results.

In this paper, an activity-based and dynamic approach is presented to analyze population exposures to road traffic noise. The contribution of this innovative approach is that (1) affected people at the workplace and places of education are incorporated and (2) the within day dynamics of varying population densities in different areas of the city is explicitly taken into account. The proposed methodology is applied to a real-world case study of the Greater Berlin area. The results demonstrate the need to account for the spatial and temporal variation in the population since the use of static resident numbers would result in an overestimation of residential noise damages. Going beyond residential exposures, the inclusion of further activity types is found to have a substantial effect on the results. Assuming individuals at work or education to be additionally affected by noise, population exposures in the central business districts are much larger than in residential areas. The proposed approach may be seen as a first step towards improved noise mapping standards to provide better recommendations for policy makers and ensure a more efficient use of noise control strategies.