Conclusions from 13 years of repeated traffic noise exposure measurements in Flanders-Belgium

摘要

To assess the overall noise exposure of the population in Flanders and in particular the exposure to street traffic noise, a measurement campaign was set up involving 250 randomly selected households in Flanders. Measurements were conducted first in 1996 and were repeated twice afterwards. This unique longitudinal noise monitoring exercise revealed that although the traffic intensity has grown over this period, noise exposure on average hardly changed. Small trends in exposure distribution and in statistical noise levels do nevertheless occur but they are marginally significant. Contrasting these measurements with status reporting based on noise maps, prediction of population exposure, and noise annoyance surveys shows that although all of these methodologies have their merits, they cannot be readily compared. In particular the difference between estimated trends in percentage of highly annoyed inhabitants based on noise level measurements and observed trends in reported noise annoyance, is striking.