Probst W.

In Annex III of Directive 2002/49/EC it is stated that the effect of noise on populations should be taken into account using dose-effect relations. The general and often published approach is to evaluate the number or percentage of people highly annoyed (HA) and to use it as a noise score to rank different scenarios. In action plans an alternative is ranked higher, if it produces a lower number of persons highly annoyed. Using a model of the noise perception of a population that takes into account a certain spread in the sensitivity of people versus noise it can be shown that this HA Score is an improper measure to describe the total noise annoyance. A single number value to be used as noise score should not only count the number of people annoyed above a given threshold, but it should also take into account the grade of annoyance caused by noise exposure. It is obvious that a function noise score – noise exposure should have a positive second derivative and therefore the steepness of the curve should increase with increasing noise exposure. It is shown that there is a strong relation between Noise Scoring function and the optimal distribution of traffic that minimizes the Noise Score. Using these relations a proposal for an adequate Noise Scoring expression is developed that can be used to rank and optimize different alternatives for action plans. The results of a case study are presented where a modification of the truck routing in an area of about 200 km² has been developed using these principles.