A new common tool to assess indoor noise from outdoor environmental noise sources

 

Herold Olsen [heroldo@netcom.no]

 

 

Later years legislation and regulation has put emphasize on the work of reducing indoor noise levels in Norwegian dwellings down below certain limits. For some years the effort has lead to a wide activity of performing sound insulation improvement, generating projecting work for transportation infrastructure owners and acoustic consultants. The majority of these efforts have been governed by the national institutes who are the legally responsible for the major noise sources.

 

During the last year a group consisting of  “The Norwegian Public Roads Administration”, “Jernbaneverket”, “Avinor”, “The Norwegian Defence Estate Agency” and “The Norwegian Pollution Control Agency” has joined forces in development of a new common data assisted tool for management of indoor noise from road, rail and aircraft noise sources. The goal is to harmonize the processes of registering building conditions, improvement of sound insulation, and  reporting for national statistics purposes. A building oriented noise database system, and a belonging user application are the two main components of the tool. It is intended to replace the existing tools “VSTØY” used for road traffic noise and “Støybygg” mainly used for aircraft and rail traffic noise. The tool is featured with full 1/3 octave spectrum capabilities and a spectral construction database from SINTEF Byggforsk. From the start it will be closely related to the new road traffic noise mapping system “Norstøy”. In addition it will have import features adapted to other commonly used systems like NORTIM and Cadna A. Though the tool is intended for use by the noise source owners and their consultants, it will be freely available to the public.

 

The paper and presentation at BNAM 2010 will explain the conceptual modeling structure of the new tool, its database and its user interface.