Application of Noise Source Predominance Maps (NSP) to agglomerates

Environmental Noise Directive prescribes periodic strategic noise maps for agglomerates in order to evaluate citizens' noise exposure. They include a global map and individual maps for each individual type of source: railways, roads, airports, and industries. The Directive also requires informing the public, but the current representation does not facilitate the understanding. In a previous study, Noise Sources Predominance (NSP) and Intensity Noise Source Predominance (I-NSP) maps have been developed to offer better representation results for strategic noise maps. NSP shows, by means of polygons and colors, the predominant source at each point of the calculation grid of the strategic noise map, while I-NSP also adds the visualization of noise exposure levels by coloring the polygons according to a color-scale. As those new maps were only tested in port areas, the present work investigates their applicability in agglomerates.