NOISE IMPACT MODELLING OF IPPC INDUSTRIAL

ACTIVITIES FOR PISA STRATEGIC NOISE MAPPING.

Gaetano Licitra
ARPAT, Environmental Regional Agency of Tuscany Region – Technical Directorate –
Firenze – ITALY.
e-mail: g.licitra@arpat.toscana.it
Paolo Gallo
ARPAT, Environmental Regional Agency of Tuscany Region – Dept. of Pisa – ITALY.
e-mail: p.gallo@arpat.toscana.it
The directive 2002/49/EC requirements set that noise impact from IPPC industrial sites
should be considered in the elaboration of strategic noise mapping. Moreover different
sources produce different annoyance in the people, so a detailed map of each source impact is
necessary to perform social-acoustical surveys and dose-effect response determination. Up to
now, few experiences of strategic maps have been shown in which IPPC sources were con-
sidered and the obtained results were generally rough, due to the difficulties to find accurate
data to model industrial sources. So, while great attention was putted to describe other
sources, strong approximations affect the strategic map for lack of this information.
In Pisa, ten IPPC sites are present and data were collected from technical documentation
submitted by owners to local government. These data were integrated with in situ measure-
ments, in order to verify the noise impact that was modelled on the basis of international
standards. Sound propagation followed ISO 9613-2. The results from each model were geore-
ferred, with a GIS, and summarized in detail, to obtain the global noise for each point of the
territory using European indicator Lnight and Lden). Then the highest global noise façade level
was assigned to each building in the municipality, maintaining the possibility to discriminate
each sources contributes. Difficulties in the drawing up the strategic map and the proposed
solutions will be presented as well as suggestions to reduce the related inaccuracy.

1. Introduction
The Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament, relating to the assessment and man-
agement of environmental noise (END), established that agglomerations with more than 250.000
inhabitants, for the first deadline of June 30th 2007, and those with more than 100.000 inhabitants,
for the second deadline of June 30th 2012, should elaborate the Strategic Noise Map (SNM). An
agglomeration, in accordance with the definition provided by the END, could include wider areas in
comparison to the municipal ones. The SNM is designed for the global assessment of noise expo-
sure in the agglomeration due to different noise sources and so it must take into account the noise
emitted by means of transport, road traffic, rail traffic, air traffic, and from sites of industrial activ-
ity such as those defined in Annex I to Council Directive 96/61/EC of 24 September 1996 concern-
ing Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC activities). For each of these sources must be
drawn up separate noise maps and the combination of these constitutes the SNM.

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16th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Kraków, Poland, 5–9 July 2009
This article presents the elaboration of the SNM for the territory of Pisa, a town of about
90,000 people. Including neighbourhood, it falls within the agglomerations with more than 100,000
inhabitants. Almost all of the typologies of aforementioned sources coexist in Pisa agglomeration; it
encompasses a dense network of urban streets, wide stretches of highways, five railway lines, an
international airport and ten IPPC activities; the latter will be particularly considered in the present
work. The noise maps for each transport sources (roads, rails, planes) were determined by means of
the assessment methods defined in Annex II of the END, that are implemented by numerous
commercially software packages. Input data were acquired by means of large measurement
campaigns of traffic and noise levels. For transport sources, it was made an estimation of the
uncertainty for the model outputs based on the “Good Practice Guide for Strategic Noise Mapping”
(GPG) issued by the European Commission Working Group Assessment of Exposure to Noise.
Actually, following the emanation of the END, several Working Groups were formed to set
standard methods, to assess environmental noise from the various sources and to elaborate the cor-
responding noise mapping techniques. Many WG are still working about this matter and their re-
sults will be aimed at improving methodologies and, overall, the quality of estimations and noise
maps. But, up to now, few efforts have been turned to noise mapping for industrial activities in the
field of application of the END1,2. Of course, the problem is not to advice owners for methods to
evaluate the environmental noise impact of their activities in order to verify the observance of exist-
ing limit values. Otherwise, the propose is to establish an assessment method, addressed to compe-
tent authorities, to implement SNM in order to evaluate, with a suitable uncertainty, noise yearly
exposure in a given area due to the specific IPPC source.
END recommends the evaluation of long-term indicators for IPPC noise by means of predic-
tion computation methods according to ISO 9613-2 and other ISO standards concerning the evalua-
tion of sound-power levels and noise-emission data from industrial sources (ISO 8297, ISO 3744
and ISO 3746). These methods should also include the introduction of three daily periods (day,
evening, night), the yearly average of the noise levels and the exclusion of the façade reflection.
The ISO standards themselves, however, are insufficient to develop adequate noise mapping. In-
deed, the methods suggested by the ISO series 3740 can be applied only to individual and small
sources, while the ISO 8297 is applicable only to industrial areas where most of the sources are
outdoors and does not considers the sources inside the buildings.
In this contest, this paper describes the application of a methodology aimed at calculating the
noise levels and producing noise maps in areas surrounding the IPPC multi-sources plants in order
to implement the SNM of Pisa. The proposed method starts from data provided by technicians in
the documentations that owners must to send to authorities within the procedures for the release of
IPPC authorization. Often, these documentations are not exhaustive and complete, but they have to
contain some minimum requirements that can be used as input data for the method.
After collecting and elaborating all of these information, the method allows to evaluate,
within a known uncertainty range, the sound power of each noise source in order to be included as
input of an outdoor propagation modelling software useful for drawing the noise map. The results
of the prediction method were calibrated and validated by using the measurements results reported
in the technical documentation. In the following, after describing the general method, a practical
example is presented and discussed and, since the industrial plants have often a very localized noise
impact, a comparison between noise maps with and without IPPC noise is shown in order to point
out differences in evaluating the number of residents exposed to certain noise levels. Finally, an im-
portant section of the study concerned the estimate of the uncertainties associated with the method.

2. The noise mapping of Pisa.

The procedure for the production of the noise map of an agglomeration according to END can
be outlined with the stages shown in Fig. 1. In addition, for the production of the SNM of an ag-
glomeration it is necessary to carried out the overlapping of the results of the noise maps obtained
for the individual sources (roads, railways, airport and IPPC activities).

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Figure 1. Synthesis of the general procedure for producing agglomerations noise mapping.

The starting bases for this work are summarized in the following:
• For the modeling of rail and road noise have been used up-to-date maps to 2007, from which
the outline of the terrain and the position of the tracks, roads and buildings were obtained.
• Prediction computation methods recommended by END were used and implemented by spe-
cific software; in particular, the method NMPB-Routes-96 for noise from road traffic and
the method RMR/SRM II for railway noise were used. The only exception was made for the
airport: the model used was INM, in order to maintain consistency with the existing plan of
Pisa Airport noise characterization; this choice not deviating much from the results could be
obtained with the model recommended by END.
• Regarding to weather corrections in computing transport noise, for cases where no direct in-
formation was available, it was considered the percentage of occurrence of favorable condi-
tions to propagation as suggested by GPG23 (50% day, 75% evening, 100% night).
• The noise map computing is based on a grid of points typically 10 m spaced and referred to
noise levels calculated at a height of 4 m from the ground.

LDEN Lnight

Figure 2. Extracts from Lden and Lnight noise maps of Pisa related to global transport noise.
Fig. 2 shows an example of Lden and Lnight noise maps of the central area of Pisa related to
transport noise. In the next sections it will be shown the SNM with contributes of all the sources.
The detailed Pisa noise maps4 related to all the noise sources can be seen in the web site
http://sira.arpat.toscana.it/sira/mappe.html.

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3. The proposed method for IPPC noise mapping.
The method was developed with the specific intent to use, as input data, the information re-
ported in the technical documentations that the companies are obliged to submit to competent au-
thorities for IPPC procedures. On this hypothesis, since the Italian legislation specifies the basic
contents of the environmental noise impact documentations, it follows that for the proposed method
the following information should be almost always available:
• digital maps of the terrain surrounding the site;
• planimetry of the interiors and exteriors of the factory and shape of the buildings;
• detailed characterization of all the sound sources (in particular: noise emission and layout);
• absorption coefficient and sound insulating power of the building elements (walls, ceilings,
windows, doors, floors) of rooms containing, at least, one noise source;
• measurement reports of residual and emission noise at the receivers surrounding the plant.
There exist many generally more or less accurate methods for predicting outdoor factory
noise level, but almost all have the disadvantage of involving long calculation times for factories of
complex shape and/or containing many noise sources (especially if there are several internal
sources). This work aims to implement a more simplified prediction method for producing noise
maps with an acceptable accuracy level. In the following subsections, one of these methods will be
illustrated. For computing the noise levels in areas outside the factory buildings, it must be token in
to account that noise outside is the sum of two contributions: the airborne noise radiated from the
building elements of the rooms due to the internal sources and the noise radiated from external
sources. The first, more complex, can be evaluated by considering internal noise levels and the air-
borne noise transmission properties of the building. In this work, a Matlab routine was expressly
implemented in order to evaluate this contribution in many real cases.

3.1 Computing of internal noise sources contribution.

Factory buildings come in many shape and size; however, often they are regularly shaped in
plan (i.e. rectangular) with flat or pitched roofs. The building elements can be made of various types
of materials. Some studies5 estimated the average sound absorption coefficient of the inner surfaces
of untreated factory buildings. They found the surface averaged coefficients varied little between
buildings of similar construction and little at all at mid and high frequencies (0.06 ÷ 0.08 for the 500
÷ 4000 Hz octave bands). At higher frequencies, considerable variations could occur for very large
rooms (maximum size greater than ~ 40 m) due to air absorption contribute. The effect of furnish-
ings significantly increases room absorption and then decreases reverberation time and internal
sound propagation (especially at mid-high frequencies). According to diffuse-field theory, the de-
creases of reverberation time in these cases correspond to the introduction of a certain amount of
acoustical absorption equivalent surface. However, the changes of reverberation time and internal
sound propagation with increasing furnishings density vary little with frequency.
The method proposed for predicting internal noise levels in factories is based on the following
assumptions:
• transmission between adjacent rooms is neglected; each room transmits noise only to the
outside;
• the calculation method is based on the Diffuse-field theory (Sabine); this means: low absorp-
tion coefficient of the building elements, position-invariant interior sound field, regular-
shaped rooms;
• as first level of approximation, furnishings are not taken into account and the internal
sources are all considered isotropic, omnidirectional and negligible in size.
It is possible to demonstrate that these simplifying assumptions wouldn’t significantly increase the
uncertainty of the final data corresponding to the outdoors noise levels.

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The calculation is based on the EN ISO 11690-3 and the EN 12354-4 standards. Referring to
Fig. 3, the envelope of the building is divided into a number of segments and it can be assumed that
the radiation of noise from the inside to outside can be represented as sound emission from equiva-
lent point sources, each of them corresponding to a particular building segment. Segmentation of
the walls must be made according to EN 12354-4 standard conditions: one of them is that the dis-
tance from the wall to nearest receiver has to be greater than twice the maximum segment size. The
sound power and the virtual location of the equivalent point sources are also determined according
to EN 12354-4 standard.

Figure 3. Example of segmentation for a regular shaped building according to EN 12354-4 standards.

The computing of internal noise levels is based on EN ISO 11690-3 standard; in particular,
the detail level 1 of the standard was considered. The position and the sound power (in octave
bands) of each source were considered as well as the absorption characteristics of the building ele-
ments. For each room, segmented as in Fig 3, it was used the Eq. (1), derived by Sabine theory:

(1)

where Lp is the sound pressure level at distance r from a source with sound power LW and directivity
factor Q that is placed in a factory room with volume V, total inner surface area S, average diffuse-
field surface absorption coefficient α d and room-constant R given by the Eq. (2).

(2)

For rooms containing more then one sources, in order to evaluate the diffuse sound field at δ (x, y,
z), it is sufficient to run the energetic summation of the Eq. (1) calculated for each source at the
same point. To define δ, a coordinate system for each room has to be fixed and centered in a room
corners. The value of Lp,TOT(δ) should be assessed at a distance from 1 to 2 m from walls of the
room where the noise is transmitted outside (beyond these walls there should be no other rooms).
A computer routine was implemented, using Matlab, by which it was possible to calculate
Lp,TOT(δ) of each δ in the room considering any number of sources, their emission characteristics,
their coordinates and the acoustic parameters of the room. The routine also includes a check proce-
dure to verify the validity of the diffuse-field assumptions in the room.
According to EN 12354-4, airborne noise radiated outside of the building can be calculated,
on equivalent point source hypothesis, using the noise levels inside the rooms, previously evaluated
by means of Diffuse-field theory, and using the transmission characteristics of building elements
(walls and windows) derivable from the technical IPPC documentation or the literature data. The
contribution of structural noise is not included in the model but it can be neglected.

3.2 Outdoors noise propagation.

The calculation of the overall outdoors noise levels produced by the IPPC activity was per-
formed considering both the contribution of all the equivalent point sources related to segmentation
and the contribution of all the sources outside the building. For computing, specific prediction soft-
ware was used that implements the propagation model proposed by ISO 9613-2. The digital maps,
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the building structural data and the noise data, obtained during the previous phases of the procedure,
were included as input to the model. Moreover, ground data and yearly averaged weather data were
inserted into the model related to the site of Pisa city.
The grid-step setting for the computations was 2 m and the receptor points were placed at 4 m
in height above the ground. The model was calibrated assuming a condition of noise emission of the
IPPC activity corresponding to purpose-made instrumental measurements carried out in selected
positions and under identical operating conditions of the activity. Thanks to this procedure, it was
possible to do some adjustments on model settings. The final results of the simulation were the
noise maps of Lnight and Lden as required by the END. According to the above assumptions, the noise
levels were estimated only for receptors that are far from factory building more than twice the
maximum segment size used in the calculation of sound power of equivalent point sources. The
output data were finally submitted to a validation procedure to verify their reliability.
Fig. 5 shows an example of noise map of Lden and Lnight related to a IPPC activity in Pisa ag-
glomeration (a waste treatment company).

LDEN Lnight

Figure 5. Noise maps of Lden and Lnight related to a Waste treatment Company in Pisa agglomeration.

4. The SNM of Pisa agglomeration.

For computing the SNM, it was first necessary to export, for each type of noise source, the
noise maps of Lden and Lnight as georeferred-grids. This procedure compels to operate on the same
base map in order to place all items on the same grid with an equal-spaced step (10 m). After im-
porting these data in a GIS, the SNM was obtained by summing the energy levels relative to spa-
tially corresponding points. Fig. 6 shows an extract of the final results that compares the SNM from
transport infrastructures only with that resulting from considering the IPPC activities too.

(a) (b)

Figure 6. Extracts of the Lden SNM: a) transport infrastructures only; b) with 3 IPPC activities too.

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Estimated percentage of Pisa residents exposed to IPPC-noise.

100000

10000

Lden
Lnight
1000
[n° residents]

100

10

1
< 35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60 60-65 65-70 70-75 >75
L [dB(A)]

Figure 7. Distributions of Pisa residents exposed to IPPC noise and to transport noise only.

Almost all the IPPC activities are located in industrial or semi-industrial zones and their noise
impact is limited to a more or less large area around the plants. Therefore, they produce a people
exposure to noise more space-limited than that produced by transport infrastructures and the num-
ber of involved residents is smaller. That is shown in Fig. 7, where the distributions of residents ex-
posed to IPPC noise are compared with similar distributions related to transport noise only. Never-
theless, noise exposure produced by the IPPC activities at the nearby residents can be very high.

5. Estimation of uncertainty of output data.

The evaluation of uncertainty would involve the analysis of all the individual processes re-
quired to construct the final noise map. These uncertainties arise from various sources including:
input data, instrumental measurements for validation, model parameters and software formulations.
For IPPC activities, it is a more difficult task because input data derive from technical documenta-
tions produced by activities owners and then it is unknown how the uncertainties are distributed.
Nonetheless, the assessment of model response uncertainties for noise maps is fundamental to un-
derstand how the final results are reliable before undertaking any action against noise.
In this work, the uncertainties of output data were estimated for each noise mapping proce-
dure. For transport infrastructures noise, the uncertainty estimation is based on the GPG2 hints and
on the accuracy level of the environmental noise measurements used in the validation procedure.
The GPG2 “toolkits” deal with understanding sources of uncertainty in noise modelling. The
quantified accuracy statements presented within the toolkits represent the likely level of acoustic
uncertainty introduced into the result by the use of that toolkit option, with a 95% confidence level.
However, the uncertainty statement within the toolkit does not in itself provide a measure of the
overall accuracy of the final results, but merely helps to understand one of the areas of uncertainty
within the overall process of noise mapping.
According to the GPG2, the uncertainty level for Pisa noise mapping of all the transport infra-
structures was estimated on about 4,5 dB. As shown by the plot in Fig. 8, this estimation was con-
firmed by the validation procedure, carried out by using the ARPAT database of about 160 envi-
ronmental noise measurements made in the years 2006 ÷ 2008 in Pisa.
As regard to IPPC noise maps, the GPG2 does not provide any quantitative indication to as-
sess the uncertainty of results, but it is possible to take the general procedures listed in the guide as
starting point for quantifying the uncertainty also in these cases. By analysing all the sources of po-
tential uncertainty it was possible to assess an uncertainty level for IPPC noise mapping of about
5,5 dB. The plot in Fig. 8 illustrate the validation procedure for an IPPC activity based on noise
measurements results reported in IPPC technical documentations.
Both the above uncertainties levels are based upon the "worst case" identified for each
sources of potential uncertainty. For IPPC activities the estimated uncertainty is greater than that
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calculated for the transport infrastructure. Essentially, this is due to vagueness and deficiency of in-
put data and instrumental measurements reported in the IPPC technical documentations.

Transport noise

IPPC noise

Figure 8. Comparison between measured and estimated Leq for validation procedures.

6. Conclusions.
The aim of this work was to underline the necessity of further studies about the role of the
IPPC noise mapping in the production of SNM required by END. In order to provide the competent
authorities with useful tools for assessing the IPPC noise mapping, it is necessary to develop predic-
tion methodologies easily applicable and, at the same time, reliable; moreover, these methodologies
should use the information that are already in possession of the authorities, without additional
charges for the owners.
The analysis of the uncertainties related to the method proposed here showed its effectiveness
and its potential validity. The uncertainties on the simulated noise levels were estimated to be about
5.5 dB, which is the limit of acceptability in the field of environmental acoustics. This uncertainty is
due, essentially, to a no detailed knowledge of sources and parameters as described in the technical
documentations. The aspect that contributes mainly to the uncertainty of the final result is the rough
evaluation of sound power of sources (4 dB compared to global 5.5 dB). Moreover, it was found
that the uncertainties associated to the determination of sources directivity, source-wall distance,
internal absorption coefficients and insulation power of the building elements are negligible. There-
fore, to improve the quality of the model outputs it is necessary the availability of more detailed in-
put data and more appropriate external noise measurements for a better validation of the model. All
these information may be requested to operators under the IPPC procedures; for example, by pro-
posing to owners a specific scheme for the elaboration of suitable technical documentation with
more accurate input data. Then, it is important to promote further investigations into the various
technical aspects affecting the accuracy of the results in order to assess the quality of an input data-
set for noise mapping purposes.

REFERENCES
1
IMAGINE Project – WP7, Guidelines for producing strategic noise maps on industrial sources,
Deliverable D14, http://www.imagine-project.org/artikel.php?ac=direct&id=152, 2007.
2
L. C. Santos, Noise Mapping of Industrial Sources, Proceedings of Acústica 2008, 2008, Coim-
bra, Portugal.
3
European Commission WG-AEN – Position Paper ‘Good Practice Guide for Strategic noise
mapping and the Production of Associated Data on Noise Exposure’, Final draft, January 2006.
4
P. Gallo, Una proposta per la mappatura acustica strategica del Comune di Pisa, Proceedings of
National Congress on Environmental Control of Physical Agents, 2009, Vercelli, Italy.
5
M. R. Hodgson, Towards a Proved Method for Predicting Factory Sound Propagation, Proceed-
ings Inter-Noise 86, 1986, New York.
8