Predicting Hourly Traflc Noise from Traflc Flow Rate Model: Underlying Concepts for the DYNAMAP Project

Abstract

The DYNAMAP project aims at obtaining a dynamic noise map of a large residential area such as the City of Milan (Italy), by recording traffic noise from a limited number of noise sensors. To this end,we perform a statistical analysis of road stretches and group them into different clusters showing a similar measured hourly traffic noise behavior. In the sameway,we group simulated hourly traffic flow rates and compare their compositions with those of the traffic noise groups. The best agreement with the traffic noise was found by using the so-called normal traffic flow rate, yielding overlaps between 68 and 97%. Finally, we derive a simple analytical model to predict the hourly traffic noise from the simulated normal traffic flow, in very good agreement with the measured values.