Soundscape in the urban area of Milan

Annoying sounds are very common in urban areas and can produce negative effects on the human health. An important tool to evaluate the degree of annoyance produced on the population by different noise sources, is represented by surveys directly addressed to the population. In this paper, we analyze the results of surveys distributed to people living or working in 14 areas in District 9 of Milan. In these areas, low-cost permanent noise monitoring stations have been installed as part of DYNAMAP project. DYNAMAP is a European Life project aiming at developing a real-time acoustic mapping system on a pilot area by means of a limited number of monitoring stations. The results obtained from the surveys have been analyzed, in order to correlate the human perception of different noise sources or characteristics of the urban soundscape. This to better discriminate the degree of annoyance due to anthropogenic noise sources perceived by the population of an urbanized area, such as that of District 9 of Milan.