Assessment of Large-Scale Action Plans to Reduce External Background Noise in School Buildings

Abstract

In this paper the authors report on a simplified procedure, developed in a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment, for the localization of school buildings characterized by high indoor background noise levels due to the outside noise sources. The noise sources include road, rail, and air traffic and other human activities (playgrounds, commercial activities, etc). Starting with the knowledge of noise pollution levels in the urban areas where the educational premises are sited, indoor background noise levels are obtained by adding two corrective terms; the first term takes into account for road configuration sound attenuation and the second one for façade sound insulation. For each educational building, a priority index is assigned on the basis of fixed objective parameters. The developed procedure has been applied to case studies of school buildings in Naples. The procedure promises a practical, low cost tool for municipal administrations to assess critical educational buildings and to plan noise reduction measures.

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