Relevance of the equal energy principle to individual sources of neighbourhood noise

The characterization of noise is relevant to acoustic disciplines concerned with effects and impact on humans. The LAeq,T is often applied to assessments of environmental and occupational noise. LAeq,T is used as an environmental noise descriptor for characterizing the total ambient sound environment and specific elements of the soundscape. Environmental noise standards generally concentrate on dose response relationships based primarily on research of transportation sources. However, such relationships do not appear to exist for specific sources in the sound environment, for example neighbourhood noise arising from a specific site, due to non-acoustic factors. This paper considers three sources of neighbourhood noise that are discriminable at residential dwellings. Reliance on the equal energy hypothesis, applied to neighbourhood sources, appears to understate the impact of noise on receptors following repeat exposure when applied to specific elements of the soundscape. Application of the equal energy principle as a means to characterize noise impact and its effects appears less relevant to the specific sources considered. Standards for characterizing sources of neighbourhood noise are required to provide a complete assessment considering not only the total ambient noise dose but specific components of the sound environment and annoyance response.