Noise Mapping of Quiet Areas

Quiet areas are becoming more and more scarce in our society, especially close to populated areas. Residential areas are now being built in places previously deemed not suitable for residential purposes. At the same time, research show how harmful noise pollution is to our health.As a first step to protect quiet areas they need to be identified. A conventional noise map does not show quiet areas, only areas that are not quiet. A conventional noise map normally includes only road- and rail traffic noise, industrial noise and noise from airports. In order to find quiet areas, the noise map also needs to include a large number of smaller noise sources.In Sweden there are several different methods on how to identify quiet areas. The official method is so demanding and complicated that no one is using it. The aim of our work is to present a new method that can be used in practice. We hope this new method can be adopted as the official one instead of everyone creating their own method. This would mean that all investigations will be carried out according to the same method which will make them more uniform and with a higher quality.