Mapping and Validation of Noise Level in Kuwait City
Jasem M. Al-Awadhi, Dhary S. AlKandary
ABSTRACT: Noise Pollution Modeling Software “CUSTIC 2.0” has been used to assess the noise level due to traffic flow in Kuwait City during weekdays and weekends at three different time slots. Geographical Information System (GIS) was used to generate, store and retrieve the spatial data and map the sound levels using an interpolation technique. In general as the traffic flow increases the noise pollution levels tend to increase in their magnitude. During the weekdays, the traffic noise is generally higher in the morning period than in the afternoon time due to higher car numbers, while in the weekends, the traffic noise is higher in the afternoon than in morning time due to increase of traffic movement for shopping purposes. In general, the maximum noise level was measured between March 2011 and February 2012 was 83 dBA and 82 dBA for weekdays and weekends respectively. The predicted levels of noise have been calculated as 80 and 70.5 dBA for weekdays and weekends. The two predicted and measured noise levels were compared with the noise level measurements at 25 different locations in Kuwait City. A good agreement between the measured and predicted results was found.
KEYWORDS: Noise; model; traffic flow; measure; predict
Received 31 August 2016 Revised 26 September 2016 Accepted
5 October 2016 In press 26 February 2017 Online
20 March 2017
© Transactions on Science and Technology 2017
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