Derivation of sound-level characteristics to assess traffic development scenarios

Functional relationships are derived between the long-term average sound level and parameters which describe the time variation of sound levels in the vicinity of transport routes under idealized conditions. The parameters comprise the peak sound level and sound-level rise rate associated with the passing of road vehicles and trains. These parameters can be relevant for health effects and annoyance. The method is designed to supplement conventional noise prediction methods for the use in wide-area appraisals of traffic development scenarios with respect to their potential impact on noise. The proposed method is preliminarily applied to a small selection of measured situations and the results are successfully compared.