The European Directive 2002/49/EC on environmental noise commits the EC-member states to evaluate the noise impact for all agglomerations, for all major roads and major railways and for all major airports within their territories and to present it on strategic noise maps. Based on the conflicts encountered action plans have to be derived that are in accordance with the requirements formulated in Annex VI of the EC Directive.

Until 30 June 2007 noise maps had to be produced for all cities - or more precise for agglomerations - with more than 250,000 inhabitants. Till 30 June 2012 all agglomerations with more than 100, 000 inhabitants have to be mapped, too.

To fulfill the requirements in the most straightforward and economical way cities, communities and countries as well as involved engineering consultants use powerful noise mapping software. The following criteria are relevant which have to be fulfilled by any noise mapping software and are fulfilled by CadnaA altogether:

• Numerous data import formats, conversion and modification tools enabling access to existing digital data
• Easy manageable checking and validation features to check the model geometry and the object data
• Input and editing for all kinds of noise types (industry, road, railway, aircraft) on a single user interface
• Noise indicators L_den and L_night implemented (including the allocation of daily hours to the periods day/evening/night)
• Calculation for individual receiver points and on a grid
• Calculation of projects of any size using distributed calculation on several computers in a network
• Easy-to-use and clearly arranged evaluation tools to calculate the number of inhabitants
• Convenient export features supporting the transfer of information to the public

CadnaA is the perfect tool to handle noise mapping projects according to the EC Directive efficiently and cost-saving.

Text of EC Directive 2002/49/EC (.pdf, 276 kb)
Noise mapping with CadnaA - overview