Noise mapping using measured noise and GPS data

In this paper, we introduce a system to easily produce a noise map using noise and GPS data measured simultaneously. The system consists of a sound level meter, a GPS receiver, a database program to manage the measured data, and a program to produce the noise map including a computer model of the target area. The GPS receiver interfaced to the sound level meter allows simultaneous measurement and storage of the noise level and the global position at a location. The database program directly imports one or more measured data stored in the sound level meter. Then, selected measurement results are exported to the noise mapping program for producing colour-coded or noise contour line maps using measured data at user-defined locations. The noise map produced can be exported to DXF and SHP files with other modeling items, for post-processing in GIs software. To demonstrate the capability of the developed system, we show a noise map for a university campus produced by the system. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.