Goodman P., Skelton P., Bell M.

The recent European Directive on the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise, (OJEC, 2002) has engendered the requirement for EU member states to undertake noise mapping for major land transport routes and within agglomerations. It is intended that such mapping will support the introduction of policies or “action plans” to ameliorate noise issues in excessively loud locations, whilst also preserving existing quiet areas. One of the key obstacles to mapping is the acquisition of necessary data, such as traffic intensities, fleet characteristics, building geometries etc., with the required spatial coverage and resolution. In describing the urban form, the bulk use of remote sensing information, such as photogrammetric, RADAR (RAdio Detection And Ranging) or LiDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) may provide an adequate solution. This paper describes a method of creating 3-D building descriptions from LiDAR data. These descriptions have been used in a noise mapping application for the City of Leicester, UK. Attention in the paper is focussed on two areas of the city; a sub-urban transport corridor, and a more central, mixed-use area, with each possessing predominantly different building characteristics. The noise maps produced using when using LiDAR generated building geometries are compared against similar maps produced by using datasets derived from third-party stereo-pair photography and the use of assumed building heights. The results are explored using both difference mapping and descriptive statistics. Conclusions are drawn with respect to future improvements to the LiDAR processing algorithm, the handling of bulk data sets and the observed differences that occur within the final maps of weekday LDEN levels.