Comparison of single vehicle noise emission models in simulations and in a real case study by means of quantitative indicators

Road traffic has a significant influence on the environmental noise pollution, producing harmful effects on human health and collective well-being. Since noise measurements cannot be performed everywhere, or even in a large number of sites, because of high costs and time consumption, traffic noise predictions are necessary for noise abatement and control. Consequently, many scientific models have been developed in recent years focusing on this aspect with the definition of source emission and sound propagation empirical formulations exclusively. This paper focuses on some Emission Models, describing the comparison of the results, in terms of sound power level emitted by a single vehicle, obtained with their application to different simulations of driving conditions and to two real study cases. After a preliminary comparison between the models, the evaluation of two indicators, namely the average and total source power level, will be discussed in relation to different conditions of the vehicle kinematics. The application of these two indicators to real study cases will demonstrate their validity. It will be shown that this procedure can become a tool for supporting people route choices according to a less impact of environmental noise. This will open the way to new scenarios of eco-routing, by means of implementation of models prediction in dedicated software platforms and/or in car navigation systems.