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Environments
Special Issues
New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II
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New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II

A special issue of Environments (ISSN 2076-3298).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 December 2023) | Viewed by 14858

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Gaetano Licitra

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
ARPAT, Environmental Protection Agency of Tuscany Region, 50144 Livorno, Italy
Interests: environmental acoustics; physical agents; noise modeling; big data
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Vogiatzis Konstantinos

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Interests: acoustics; environmental control systems; acoustic properties of solids; architectural acoustics; noise
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing attention among the public following scientific results regarding the effects of noise pollution on health pushed the EU to issue the 49/2002/CE directive. Noise mapping in the EU showed an enormous number of annoyed citizens; as a result, cities and infrastructure owners were asked to mitigate noise from transport and industrial sources, inside and outside buildings. New solutions are now being studied and applied, and there is a great deal of interest in experimentation taking into account green economy, recycling materials, new approaches to traffic management as low emission zones, new pavements, new vehicles and tires, and novel systems to reduce noise at sources for railways and airports.

Methods and procedures are set to establish the efficacy and efficiency of mitigation actions, while standards on barriers and pavement can help to qualify performances, and the prioritization of actions has become crucial in order to guarantee transparent principles to the public.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to determine the state of the art in noise mitigation at the source, and also in propagation and at the receivers.

A variety of research topics are of interest, including but not limited to:

  • Noise action plans;
  • Transportation noise mitigation;
  • Policies and good practices for traffic management, noise planning;
  • Noise control;
  • Industrial noise remediation;
  • Methods for action prioritization;
  • Evaluation of mitigation action performance;
  • Models and algorithms for source characterization and outdoor sound propagation;
  • Classification, evaluation, and protection of quiet areas;
  • Noise mitigation in building acoustics;
  • Wind turbine noise;
  • Use of recycled and waste materials to reduce noise.

The publications in the first volume, which we believe may be of interest to you, can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/environments/special_issues/noise_pollut

Prof. Dr. Gaetano Licitra
Prof. Dr. Vogiatzis Konstantinos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Environments is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • noise action plan
  • transportation noise mitigation
  • noise planning
  • traffic management
  • noise control

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

32 pages, 14379 KiB  
Article
Acoustic Characterization of Potential Quiet Areas in Dortmund, Germany
by Bryce T. Lawrence, Andreas Frücht, Damian Heying, Kai Schröer and Dietwald Gruehn
Environments 2024, 11(4), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments11040069 - 31 Mar 2024
Viewed by 1916
Abstract
German noise action plans aim to reduce negative health outcomes from noise exposure and identify quiet areas free of noise pollution. Quiet area identification in German noise action plans is based primarily on noise mapping and spatial analysis and not empirical or qualitative [...] Read more.
German noise action plans aim to reduce negative health outcomes from noise exposure and identify quiet areas free of noise pollution. Quiet area identification in German noise action plans is based primarily on noise mapping and spatial analysis and not empirical or qualitative data about acoustic environments, thus leaving a gap in the understanding of the quality of formally recognized quiet areas in noise action plans. This work presents a comparative empirical case study in Dortmund, Germany, with the aim to describe the diurnal dB(A) and biophonic properties of quiet areas versus noise ‘hot spots’. Sound observations (n = 282,764) were collected in five different natural or recreational land use patch types larger than four acres within 33 proposed quiet areas in Dortmund (n = 70) and 23 noise hot spots between 27 April 2022 and 2 March 2023. We found that quiet areas are on average more than 20 dB(A) quieter than noise hot spots almost every hour of the day. Forests, managed tree stands, cemeteries, and agriculture diel patterns are dominated by dawn dusk chorus in spring and summer, whereas sports and recreation as well as noise hot spots are dominated by traffic and human noise. A novel composite biophony mapping procedure is presented that finds distinct temporal distribution of biophony in forested and agriculture peri-urban locations positively associated with patch size, distance away from LDEN > 55, proximity to water, and the number of vegetation layers in the plant community. Anthrophony distribution dominates urban land uses in all hours of the day but expands during the day and evening and contracts at night and in dusk hours. The procedures presented here illustrate how qualitative information regarding quiet areas can be integrated into German noise action planning. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II)
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17 pages, 5024 KiB  
Article
Repeatability of the European Standardized Method for Measuring Sound Reflection and Sound Insulation of Noise Barriers
by Paolo Guidorzi and Massimo Garai
Environments 2023, 10(8), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments10080139 - 7 Aug 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2091
Abstract
The EN 1793-5 and EN 1793-6 standards have been in use for many years as a method for measuring the intrinsic characteristics of noise barriers installed along highways and railways. They require a sound source and a grid of microphones, to be placed [...] Read more.
The EN 1793-5 and EN 1793-6 standards have been in use for many years as a method for measuring the intrinsic characteristics of noise barriers installed along highways and railways. They require a sound source and a grid of microphones, to be placed near the barrier and in free field conditions, according to predetermined distances. In principle, small errors in positioning the sound source and microphone grid may affect the results obtained. An international round-robin test was carried out in 2012 to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility of the method, but until now no studies have been carried out to evaluate and compare the repeatability of laboratory versus in-place measurements performed with the same equipment and its variance when an imperfect positioning of sound source and microphones is taken into account. In the present work, multiple series of sound reflection index and sound insulation index measurements performed on noise barriers of the same kind installed in the laboratory or along a highway are presented. The measurements were repeated in different ways: (1) in the laboratory, leaving the source and microphones unmoved to assess the repeatability of the results and of the measurement system under controlled conditions; (2) in the laboratory, repositioning for each measurement the source and microphone grid to assess the robustness of the method under real conditions but in a controlled environment; (3) in situ, along a highway open to traffic, repositioning for each measurement the source and microphone grid to assess the repeatability of the method under real conditions in a critical environment. In both reflection index and sound insulation index measurements, the standard deviation on single-number ratings in all cases examined is well below the value presented in EN 1793-5 and EN 1793-6, which was obtained from statistical analysis of the international round-robin test performed a dozen years ago, suggesting that expert operators with state-of-the art equipment can achieve much better results now. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II)
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20 pages, 9862 KiB  
Article
Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Wooden Sonic Crystals Applied as Noise Barriers
by Tommaso D’Orazio, Francesco Asdrubali, Luís Godinho, Matheus Veloso and Paulo Amado-Mendes
Environments 2023, 10(7), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments10070116 - 4 Jul 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2329
Abstract
Recent research has been developed by different groups towards the development of sonic crystals as noise barriers. The present paper aims to contribute to this research, focusing on the possible application of this technology in practice, and exploring some aspects that may be [...] Read more.
Recent research has been developed by different groups towards the development of sonic crystals as noise barriers. The present paper aims to contribute to this research, focusing on the possible application of this technology in practice, and exploring some aspects that may be useful for its further development. One of the objectives of this work is to explore the differences between experimental results obtained under laboratory conditions and numerical results computed with the finite element method (FEM), in 2D and 3D, understanding if different types of simplified models can be of use in the practical analysis of sonic crystals. Through this comparison, a validation of the prediction numerical models is performed, giving confidence for their use in the development and study of sonic crystal configurations. In this context, different geometric arrangements of the sonic crystals’ scatterers (the individual elements that make up the barriers) have been analyzed with the help of the numerical method, evaluating their behavior in different arrangements of numbers of elements, shape and size. A number of parametric studies are also performed introducing some randomness in the structure (in scatterer size and spacing), and analyzing its effect on the insertion loss provided by the sonic crystal. These contributions can be significantly useful for the development of new solutions, giving important hints about the sensitivity of these structures to possible defects or limitations in their production. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II)
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16 pages, 8779 KiB  
Article
Experimental Study of Grain Dryer Noise Emissions
by William Lubitz, Kyle Teeter, Ethan Parker, Rachel Dalton and James Dyck
Environments 2023, 10(6), 100; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments10060100 - 12 Jun 2023
Viewed by 3305
Abstract
There is increasing interest in the environmental noise emissions from grain dryers and the potential impact of practical noise pollution mitigations such as barriers adjacent to dryers. Grain dryers are an essential part of grain production in many parts of the world, including [...] Read more.
There is increasing interest in the environmental noise emissions from grain dryers and the potential impact of practical noise pollution mitigations such as barriers adjacent to dryers. Grain dryers are an essential part of grain production in many parts of the world, including Ontario, Canada. Most dryers are large, stationary units that include a burner to provide process heat and a fan or blower to move heated air through the grain being dried. This study measured sound levels at a range of distances from multiple grain drying facilities in Ontario, Canada, over two drying seasons. It was found that the sound level at a given distance varied substantially, depending on the dryer type and presence of blocking features such as grain bins or buildings. Noise emissions did not necessarily correlate to the size or drying capacity of the facility, with some smaller top dry dryers having higher noise emissions than other much larger tower dryers. Targeted investigations of the impact of practical remediations in the form of physical sound barriers showed sound level reductions were possible that were similar in magnitude to those achieved by highway sound walls along roadways, with most sound reduction being at higher frequencies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II)
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16 pages, 3445 KiB  
Article
Definition of Key Performance Indicators for Noise Monitoring Networks
by Matteo Bolognese, Stefano Carpita, Luca Fredianelli and Gaetano Licitra
Environments 2023, 10(4), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/environments10040061 - 4 Apr 2023
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4386
Abstract
The European Noise Directive fixed a well-defined schedule on a five-year basis for the noise exposure evaluation of citizens. Noise monitoring is needed to validate noise maps of the main transportation infrastructures and it can also represent an improvement. By comparing with average [...] Read more.
The European Noise Directive fixed a well-defined schedule on a five-year basis for the noise exposure evaluation of citizens. Noise monitoring is needed to validate noise maps of the main transportation infrastructures and it can also represent an improvement. By comparing with average noise maps, a properly set sensor network can report noise information in a more case-specific way, including time variations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, key performance indicators (KPIs) evaluating the technical performance and financial sustainability of acoustic networks have never been presented in the scientific literature. Therefore, in the present work, a set of KPIs are proposed on the basis of KPIs defined for monitoring networks of other pollutants. It is then tuned according to noise monitoring, in line with the current legislations. As a case study, the performance of three monitoring networks installed in ports are evaluated and discussed. The resulting investment and maintenance costs can be helpful for decision makers to calculate the cost–benefits in the installation of new monitoring stations and also to evaluate the performance of the already-existing ones. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue New Solutions Mitigating Environmental Noise Pollution II)
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