Towards Large-Scale Environmental Noise Mapping in Europe's Natural Areas

Sound propagation outdoors involves complex physics, posing significant challenges for accurate computational modelling and environmental noise mapping in natural areas.This study uses the advanced Harmonoise point-topoint sound propagation model, which incorporates key features for natural environments, such as acoustically soft surfaces, terrain variations, meteorological effects, and their interactions.Considering the model requirements, the study leverages remotely sensed data featuring high spatial and temporal resolution.Relevant datasets such as elevation, land use and meteorological parameters are integrated into the modelling framework, allowing to produce detailed exposure level maps.Standard noise emission spectra for anthropogenic traffic sources such as roads, railways and aircrafts, together with wind turbine and mining activities, are of interest.By utilizing open input data only, the study ensures applicability over various countries to arrive at the challenging task of producing anthropogenic noise exposure maps in all of Europe's natural areas.In this paper, focus is on road traffic noise, where traffic parameters are based on road categorization, and an update of the progress is reported.