Predicting hourly trafic noise from trafic flow rate model: Underlying concepts for the DYNAMAP project

The DYNAMAP project aims at obtaining a dynamic noise map of a large residential area such as the City of Milan (Italy), by recording trafic noise from a limited number of noise sensors. Tothis end, we perform a statistical analysis of road stretches and group them into different clusters showing a similar measured hourly trafic noise behavior. Inthe same way, we group simulated hourly traffic flow rates and compare their compositions with those of the trafic noise groups. The best agreement with the traffic noise was found by using the so-called normal trafic flow rate, yielding overlaps between 68 and 97%. Finally, we derive a simple analytical model to predict the hourly trafic noise from the simulated normal trafic flow, in very good agreement with the measured values.