Forecasting community response to low-frequency noise

The most common approach to managing environmental noise is by reference to A-weighted sound levels deemed appropriate for the community. These criteria are usually derived from transportation noise studies for which the relative proportion of low-frequency noise is implicit. Very different community reactions can arise when source spectra don't represent those studied. Responses diverge even further when the listeners' context also differs from that originally studied. This is nowhere more evident than in the case of large industrial equipment (such as power plants and gas compressor stations) sited in rural areas, due in large part to strong Low-Frequency Noise (LFN). Guidance for forecasting community reaction to LFN is scattered throughout the literature as individual studies employing a diverse assortment of approaches and noise descriptors. The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate a straightforward, comprehensive, and unified forecasting approach suitable for inclusion in ANSI S12.9 Part 4 "Noise Assessment and Prediction of Long-Term Community Response", similar in many respects to the method recently deleted from this standard (2005 Annex D).