NOISE IMPACT PREDICTION: SOME COMPARISONS OF COMMUNITY RESPONSE MEASURES AND OF NOISE METRICS.

Equations expressing community impacts as a function of noise level are necessary both to quantify environmental impacts and to set community sound level standards. In the past, a variety of noise metrics have been used for community noise, and a number of indicators of community response to noise have been discussed. More recently, there have been efforts to reduce confusion by focusing on a single noise metric, and on a general notion of adverse community response. It is possible, however, that significant information is lost by using only one noise metric and one measures of adverse response. This paper investigates whether or not several indicators of community response vary similarly with noise level, and whether a single noise metric serves equally well as a predictor for all of the indicators of response. The analysis is based on data for road traffic noise sources only, collected during 1975 and 1976 in southern Ontario.