Noise and Legal Dispute: Applications and Limits of the Italian Standard UNI/TS 11844

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The abstract submitted to me alone contains multiple errors which look like line numbers. The authors should carefully check their manuscript to be error-free before submission. Thank you.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

NA.

Author Response

thanks for the comments. The responses to the kind reviewers are attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

A lot of methodological data in the third chapter is presented. In my opinion -  a deeper analysis and description of the reasons for the final results of the investigation are lacking. 

Author Response

thanks for the comments. The responses to the kind reviewers are attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

It is frustrating for the reader that the paper cites Italian legislature without any translation to English. It is not possible to understand the context without comprehending the Italian language. In addition, the study refers to Italian standards that are not freely available, internationally.

The introduction need to be more focused and must provide a clear purpose for the study. The cited literature is not adequate since the background is much wider than presented in here.

The standard methods have not been described in the text at all. The actual measurement methods and procedures have not been explained at all. The references to measurement standards are vague.

 

It is not explained, how the impulsive events are taken into account. Equation (3) seems to consider tonality and masking background noise. This equation is not very clearly presented. BWi has not been explained. 

The effect of duration of the noise is not explained, either. The investigation period is mentioned but not described at all.

Discussion is missing. The conclusions are not justified since indisputable scientific evidence has not been presented or discussed.

Some detailed comments:

line 123: LAeqa presumably is the level of total environmental noise containing both the sound of the specific source and the background noise.

lines 145-146: the literature reference is needed.

Equation (5) in dc  the c should be subscript. DL is missing apostrophe.

line 160 Tab. 1. Reference to "Table 1" would be more informative. The caption of Table 1 is not clear. The UNI/TS could be cited [Ref. 22, Table 3]

Table 1: DL´ is used instead of D´L.

lines 162-166: It is not explained, how the impulsive events are taken into account.

line 178: Italin laws correct to "Italian"

line 182: road noise presumably refers to road traffic noise.

Tables 2-7 captions describe calculation of D’i. Is this d_i based on Eq (3)?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Why numbering of sections starts from 2. Introduction. Starting from 1 would be more natural.

The use of acronyms is not consistent. For example, Signal Detection Theory is referred in various ways.

Author Response

thanks for the comments. The responses to the kind reviewers are attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, the topics quite interesting and whorthy of investigation.
However some revisions are needed.

At the end of the introduction and generally in the introduction I cannot get the aim and scope of the paper.

Please improve the reference analysis since it seems like this topic is not so interesting as effectivly is

Please add a discussion paragraph where authors argument pro or against this standard and also give theri opinion to the expecially table1: which level would you choose or did you chose ah thresholds in your case studies?

the authors should also report if those measured noises were evaluated as annoying by people. This would be useful to compare objective and subjective assessments.

Were those measures used in lawsuits? If yes were those noise source affected to the resuls? some modification on those source where imposed?

Please double check the references since there are errors and mistake in this section.

Author Response

thanks for the comments. The responses to the kind reviewers are attached

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Use of term psycho acoustics is not consistent. Please, use psychoacoustics in every occurrence.

The methods present 5 different cases but only one case is investigated in detail in results. It is not possible to follow which choices were applied in each case. Anyway, the authors state that these choices are crucial for the assessment of detectability level. The investigation should be improved to be scientifically acceptable. 

There are errors in several reference citations. Please, check everyone of them.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Explanation of acronyms is repetitive. This could be improved.

 

Author Response

The author thanks the reviewer for the advice. 

In Ref. the errors have been corrected. It was a problem of Latex in the editing of some words and of the references (laws and standards).

In §2.2 we explain that the same metodology was applied to 5 different cases.

In this work it was not interesting to analyze the final value but to understand how the operator technician modifies the result obtained starting from the subjective choices he makes in applying the methodology. For this reason, we have chosen to report all the values and all the calculations of case 4 only. This case, as better explained in the correct version of the work, is the most representative of all the problems that can be encountered by applying the methodology described in the paper.

Following the reviewer's suggestions, we have rewritten paragraph 2.2 trying to better explain these aspects.

All corrections are underlined in the text.

Many thanks

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, thank you. all comments have been addressed. One minor review: reference 27 contains some errors. Please double check it

Author Response

Many thanks again. The errors have been corrected. It was a problem of Latex in the editing of the references about the standards