Opportunities for Environmental Noise Mapping in Saudi Arabia: A Case of Traffic Noise Annoyance in an Urban Area in Jeddah City

Abstract The significant growth in traffic density in Slovakia, combined with the country’s economic change, has resulted in new environmental noise issues, particularly in road traffic noise. The objective of this study was to assess and evaluate the impact of environmental noise on the psychosocial well-being of young healthy individuals in the two main Slovak cities of Bratislava and Kosice. To assess noise annoyance, interference with activities, and sleep disturbance, the ICBEN (The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Noise) anonymous validated “Noise annoyance questionnaire” was applied; noise levels were objectified by direct measurements using a sound level analyzer with a frequency analysis module. Young individuals between the ages of 20 and 30 were interviewed in Bratislava (533 respondents, 155 males) and Kosice (355 respondents, 111 males). The majority of the respondents in both cities were exposed to medium levels of road traffic noise LAeq ≥ 60 dB. In Bratislava, 27.82 % of respondents resided in the higher noise exposure category LAeq ≥ 70 dB, while in Kosice, 39.9 % resided in the lower noise exposure category LAeq < 50 dB. Road traffic noise annoys respondents in the higher noise exposure category in Bratislava 63.51 %, and even in the lower noise exposure category in Kosice, it interferes with reading and mental work, sleep and falling asleep 46.51 %. The study has identified traffic noise as an environmental issue in large cities, emphasizing the need for vulnerable individuals to be protected, particularly at night.

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Noise score rating models for Q-Zones and embedded parks

Noise Mapping ◽

10.1515/noise-2015-0004 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Konstantinos Vogiatzis ◽

Markus Petz

Keyword(s):

Road Traffic ◽

Simulation Analysis ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Correction Function ◽

Special Focus ◽

Frequency Noise ◽

Noise Levels ◽

Noise Mapping ◽

Eu Directive ◽

Noise Annoyance

Abstract CITYHUSH project supports city administrations in the implementation of noise action plans according to the EU directive 2002/49/EC. The action “Noise and vibration control at source – Acoustically green vehicles” validates noise score rating models in a case in the Athens area, including Q-Zones (Quiet zones) and embedded parks, identifying perceived benefits on noise. Annoyance for PTW (powered two-wheeler) is masked in general traffic annoyance. However, a PTW pass may become recognizable and clearly distinct within the traffic noise environment formed by the road traffic flow and synthesis. Several strategic noise mapping scenarios with high noise levels from PTWs, as well as low frequency noise annoyance events, were evaluated proving that the noise levels in a Q-Zone and embedded parks may be reduced with an increased park capacity. Measures with a special focus on the reduction of conventionally powered motorbikes and scooters (PTWs) were evaluated. PTW’s emission values were derived, from known values and past measurements, in the form of a correction function as a function of speed to perform simulation analysis for various analogies of conventionally versus electrically driven PTWs. Relevant noise difference maps indicate noise reductions, especially when additional measures are included, such as speed limits.

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MODELLING URBAN NOISE IN CITYGML ADE: CASE OF THE NETHERLANDS

ISPRS Annals of Photogrammetry Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ◽

10.5194/isprs-annals-iv-4-w5-73-2017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol IV-4/W5 ◽

pp. 73-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

K. Kumar ◽

H. Ledoux ◽

T. J. F. Commandeur ◽

J. E. Stoter

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Input Data ◽

Road Traffic ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Environmental Noise ◽

Motor Vehicles ◽

Road Traffic Noise ◽

Noise Levels ◽

Noise Mapping ◽

Urban Noise

Road traffic and industrial noise has become a major source of discomfort and annoyance among the residents in urban areas. More than 44&thinsp;% of the EU population is regularly exposed to road traffic noise levels over 55 dB, which is currently the maximum accepted value prescribed by the Environmental Noise Directive for road traffic noise. With continuously increasing population and number of motor vehicles and industries, it is very unlikely to hope for noise levels to diminish in the near future. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor urban noise, so as to make mitigation plans and to deal with its adverse effects. The 2002/49/EC Environmental Noise Directive aims to determine the exposure of an individual to environmental noise through noise mapping. One of the most important steps in noise mapping is the creation of input data for simulation. At present, it is done semi-automatically (and sometimes even manually) by different companies in different ways and is very time consuming and can lead to errors in the data. In this paper, we present our approach for automatically creating input data for noise simulations. Secondly, we focus on using 3D city models for presenting the results of simulation for the noise arising from road traffic and industrial activities in urban areas. We implemented a few noise modelling standards for industrial and road traffic noise in CityGML by extending the existing Noise ADE with new objects and attributes. This research is a steping stone in the direction of standardising the input and output data for noise studies and for reconstructing the 3D data accordingly.

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Subjective Noise Annoyance and Road Traffic Noise Exposure in Munich: Results of Questionnaire Data and Noise Mapping

Epidemiology ◽

10.1097/01.ede.0000362672.43565.2d ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 20 ◽

pp. S200 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Martina Kohlhuber ◽

Heidi Mayrhofer ◽

Dieter Kemmather ◽

Dorothee Twardella ◽

Hermann Fromme ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Noise Exposure ◽

Road Traffic ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Road Traffic Noise ◽

Questionnaire Data ◽

Noise Mapping ◽

Noise Annoyance

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Detection of Anomalous Noise Events for Real-Time Road-Traffic Noise Mapping: The Dynamap’s project case study

Noise Mapping ◽

10.1515/noise-2018-0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 71-85 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Francesc Alías ◽

Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès ◽

Ferran Orga ◽

Joan Claudi Socoró

Keyword(s):

Real Time ◽

Road Traffic ◽

Low Cost ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Real Life ◽

Noise Pollution ◽

Environmental Noise ◽

Operating Conditions ◽

Road Traffic Noise ◽

Noise Mapping

Abstract Environmental noise is increasing year after year, especially in urban and suburban areas. Besides annoyance, environmental noise also causes harmful health effects on people. The Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC (END) is the main instrument of the European Union to identify and combat noise pollution, followed by the CNOSSOS-EU methodological framework. In compliance with the END legislation, the European Member States are required to publish noise maps and action plans every five years. The emergence of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) have changed the paradigm to address the END regulatory requirements, allowing the dynamic ubiquitous measurement of environmental noise pollution. Following the END, the LIFE DYNAMAP project aims to develop a WASN-based low-cost noise mapping system to monitor the acoustic impact of road infrastructures in real time. Those acoustic events unrelated to regular traffic noise should be removed from the equivalent noise level calculations to avoid biasing the noise map generation. This work describes the different approaches developed within the DYNAMAP project to implement an Anomalous Noise Event Detector on the low-cost sensors of the network, considering both synthetic and real-life acoustic data.Moreover, the paper reflects on several open challenges, discussing how to tackle them for the future deployment of WASN-based noise monitoring systems in real-life operating conditions.

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Aggregate Impact of Anomalous Noise Events on the WASN-Based Computation of Road Traffic Noise Levels in Urban and Suburban Environments

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s20030609 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 609 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Francesc Alías ◽

Ferran Orga ◽

Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès ◽

Joan Claudi Socoró

Keyword(s):

Sensor Networks ◽

Road Traffic ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Noise Pollution ◽

Environmental Noise ◽

Integration Time ◽

Road Traffic Noise ◽

Noise Levels ◽

Noise Mapping ◽

Acoustic Data

Environmental noise can be defined as the accumulation of noise pollution caused by sounds generated by outdoor human activities, Road Traffic Noise (RTN) being the main source in urban and suburban areas. To address the negative effects of environmental noise on public health, the European Environmental Noise Directive requires EU member states to tailor noise maps and define the corresponding action plans every five years for major agglomerations and key infrastructures. Noise maps have been hitherto created from expert-based measurements, after cleaning the recorded acoustic data of undesired acoustic events, or Anomalous Noise Events (ANEs). In recent years, Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) have become an alternative. However, most of the proposals focus on measuring global noise levels without taking into account the presence of ANEs. The LIFE DYNAMAP project has developed a WASN-based dynamic noise mapping system to analyze the acoustic impact of road infrastructures in real time based solely on RTN levels. After studying the bias caused by individual ANEs on the computation of the A-weighted equivalent noise levels through an expert-based dataset obtained before installing the sensor networks, this work evaluates the aggregate impact of the ANEs on the RTN measurements in a real-operation environment. To that effect, 304 h and 20 min of labeled acoustic data collected through the two WASNs deployed in both pilot areas have been analyzed, computing the individual and aggregate impacts of ANEs for each sensor location and impact range (low, medium and high) for a 5 min integration time. The study shows the regular occurrence of ANEs when monitoring RTN levels in both acoustic environments, which are especially common in the urban area. Moreover, the results reveal that the aggregate contribution of low- and medium-impact ANEs can become as critical as the presence of high-impact individual ANEs, thus highlighting the importance of their automatic removal to obtain reliable WASN-based RTN maps in real-operation environments.

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Land Use Land Cover of an Urban Area using Remote Sensing (Texture Analysis Applications) and GIS - A Case Study of Central Region of Almadinah Almunawarah, Saudi Arabia

International Journal of Advanced Remote Sensing and GIS ◽

10.23953/cloud.ijarsg.256 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 2114-2123

Author(s):

Saleh Daqamseh ◽

Keyword(s):

Remote Sensing ◽

Land Use ◽

Saudi Arabia ◽

Land Cover ◽

Texture Analysis ◽

Urban Area ◽

Central Region ◽

Land Use Land Cover

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A Questionnaire-Based Survey to Assess the Level of Knowledge and Awareness about Drug–Food Interactions among General Public in Western Saudi Arabia

Pharmacy ◽

10.3390/pharmacy9020076 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 76

Author(s):

Syed Faisal Zaidi ◽

Rayan Mgarry ◽

Abdullah Alsanea ◽

Sakar Khalid Almutairi ◽

Yaser Alsinnari ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Saudi Arabia ◽

Statistical Significance ◽

Cross Sectional Study ◽

Exclusion Criteria ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Jeddah City ◽

Fundamental Information ◽

Inadequate Knowledge ◽

Level Of Knowledge ◽

Males And Females

Introduction: Various drug–food interactions exist that may hinder treatment and can sometimes be lethal. Our aim was to assess the level of public knowledge and awareness in Jeddah city, Western Saudi Arabia, about drug–food interactions, along with the effects of demographics on their knowledge. Methods: A survey questionnaire was administered in this cross-sectional study to participants spread across multiple locations in Jeddah, including in malls and public gatherings. Participants included both males and females. Sample size was calculated through Raosoft® software. Data analysis was executed using IBM Statistic SPSS and the level of statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. Results: A total of 410 people participated in the study and only 92.68% (380) of responses were enrolled in the study; 7.32% (30) were not enrolled due to the exclusion criteria. Surprisingly, only six out of eighteen questions regarding drug–food interactions in the administered questionnaire were correctly answered by 380 participants. Data indicated that the participants had a poor to intermediate level of both knowledge and awareness with respect to drug–food interactions. Furthermore, participants showed moderate to strong awareness of the effects of alcohol and tea generally, and their interaction with medication. Conclusion: Participants in our study showed inadequate knowledge of basic and fundamental information about drug–food interactions, which highlights the dire need to increase awareness.

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The influence of a signal’s time structure on the perceived noise annoyance of road traffic noise

Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering ◽

10.1007/s40201-021-00655-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jan Felcyn

Keyword(s):

Road Traffic ◽

Temporal Structure ◽

Traffic Noise ◽

Sound Level ◽

Time Structure ◽

Common Source ◽

Road Traffic Noise ◽

Noise Annoyance ◽

Modern Cities ◽

Negative Feelings

Abstract Purpose Road traffic noise is the most common source of noise in modern cities. The noise indicators used to manage noise do not take into account its temporal structure. However, in cities the traffic flow varies during the day, peaking due to congestion and more fluent periods. In this research we sought to analyze how people (giving answers on a numerical ICBEN scale) perceive noise stimuli with the same LAeqT values but different time structures (more/less noise events, different amplitude envelopes). Methods 31 people with normal hearing took part in an experiment conducted in an anechoic chamber. Participants listened to 18 different noise recordings and rated each of them using the numerical ICBEN scale regarding noise annoyance. Results The results showed that only sound level was a statistically significant factor. However, based on people’s remarks about noise, we can also say that the more intermittent the noise is, the more negative feelings it evokes in people. Conclusions Time structure does not have a significant influence on people’s judgments about noise annoyance. However, people tend to have a preference for a steady noise rather than an intermittent one.

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