Preliminary Assessment of Road Traffic Noise in an Urban Residential Area – A Case Study in Bucharest, Romania

Environmental noise pollution is an important topic of public interest especially in urban areas. As more and more people live inside cities, they are exposed to all kinds of noise sources, coming from road traffic, railway, airports or industry related. The most pervasive environmental noise is produced by vehicles, both in Europe and in Romania, and it is expected to increase due to the tendencies of urban sprawl and mobility demand. Depending on the type, intensity and duration, noise can have an important impact on human health and wellbeing, and that is the reason why assessment of noise pollution is essential for local city authorities, for noise abatement and control. The new European common noise assessment methods (CNOSSOS-EU) that were adopted in the Romanian legislation in 2019, establish new principles and considerations for estimating noise levels and producing strategic noise maps for large urban agglomerations, based on more detailed input data. This study aims to highlight some of the preliminary results that were obtained using the new methodological framework for assessing the environmental road traffic noise produced in a residential area in Bucharest. Preliminary data was gathered experimentally through a novel approach, by using different advanced systems for traffic data monitoring and noise logging. In future works, the data will be further processed and compared on different levels with similar data obtained from urban areas in Tuscany, Italy. The discussed results will offer insights for the new consecutive rounds of strategic noise mapping in Europe.