Ten years of experience with road noise auralisations

For more than a decade, The Danish Road Directorate has used auralisations to communicate the future road noise impact to the public. Auralisations are add-ons to the mandatory noise maps and assessments of noise exposed dwellings and people. Moreover, auralisations are very useful for public presentations like EIA etc. Road noise auralisations and presentations have been made to give the road's neighbours an impression and understanding of the impact, the road will have on the environment. Additionally, auralisations have been shown to be a very powerful tool in terms of explaining general acoustic terms and sound propagation e.g. the influence of wind direction and speed and the efficiency of future noise barriers of various heights. Presentation formats range from webpages to auditory presentations with calibrated headphones and overlaying introducing speak giving exact sound levels for the audience. Even videos and recorded soundscapes from specific locations have been used to create auralisations that are more trustworthy and recognizable for the audience. This presentation gives an overview of different formats of presentation and summarizes our experiences so far with different auralisations suiting the various cases of road projects. The use of simple auralisasions in Dynamic Noise Monitoring Maps will also be touched.