Urban road traffic noise interventions: A method to quantify their effects on annoyance and sleep disturbance at a small scale

Road traffic is the main source contributing to noise exposure in urbanized areas. With the rapid urbanization and increasing attention on the way sound can affect health and wellbeing, the question is how to shield ourselves from harmful effects. In the most common noise intervention studies only large-scale interventions, like noise barriers along a highway, are assessed. The effects on health and wellbeing are based on rough estimations of sound reduction. In this study, the effects of a small scale intervention on annoyance and sleep disturbance will be investigated, considering relative changes in dose-response relationships to account for local effects. It will give more insight into the subtle changes due to interventions on a local scale, providing more detail additional to existing conventional studies. To develop this methodology an intervention study in Rotterdam was taken as a test case. The location and its intervention were modelled using a 3D geometrical acoustics software (Olive Tree Lab). The predicted noise reduction due to the interventions, as well as the predicted health effects, were compared with measured data and local surveys. The results shed a light on the suitability of this approach to predict health effects due to interventions at a local scale.