Planning, construction and experimental tuning of an urban railway noise cadaster

In the last twenty years increasing public sensibility for urban noise, the relevance of the transport noise sources and the complexity of their interaction have hastened the research in this sector. The contribution of railway traffic to the acoustic environment may be relevant in those urban areas where the railway infrastructure enters to increase its accessibility. Moreover on these infrastructures various traffic flows (passengers and freight) are often overlapped. The key operational procedure for an integrated preventing and resolving action is the overlapping of a noise cadaster, summarising the acoustic effects of the railway traffic, to the acoustic zoning, resulting from land use and regulations. The paper deals with the whole procedure of planning, building up and tuning on the basis of experimental measurements of an urban railway noise cadaster. The procedure includes: a) data collection on the urban area; b) data collection on the railway traffic; c) spatial sampling; d) temporal sampling; e) measurement of acoustic levels; f) analysis and elaboration of measurements results; g) synthesis of locally specific and general key findings. A pilot application of the procedure to an extended case study in Roma metropolitan area has been carried out.

In the last 20 years the increasing public sensibility for the urban noise, the relevance of the transport noise sources and the complexity of their interaction have pushed on the research in this sector. The contribution of the railway traffic to the acoustic environment may be relevant in the urban areas where the railway infrastructure enters to increase its accessibility. Moreover on these infrastructures various traffic flows (passengers and freight) are often overlapped. The key operational procedure for an integrated preventing and resolving action is the overlapping of a noise cadaster, summarising the acoustic effects of the railway traffic, to the acoustic zoning, resulting from land use and regulations. The paper deals with the whole procedure of planning, building up and tuning on the basis of experimental measurements of an urban railway noise cadaster. The procedure includes: a) data collection on the urban area; b) data collection on the railway traffic; c) spatial sampling; d) temporal sampling; e) measurement of acoustic levels; f) analysis and elaboration of measurements results; g) synthesis of locally specific and general key findings. A pilot application of the procedure to an extended case study in Roma metropolitan area has been carried out.