Participative pilot study at the vicinity of airports for the construction of a noise point counter integrating instantaneous annoyance at overflight

Current regulations on transport noise are based on energetic acoustic indicators that do not adequately reflect the intensity and repetitive nature of noise peaks, particularly for aircraft overflights or rail traffic. The public debate on these issues therefore often centres on the questioning of these indicators, which are deemed to be inadequate to reflect the annoyance caused to local populations, particularly in a context of increasing traffic. Bruitparif suggests exploring a noise events counter, the Noise Point Counter (NPC), based on existing NAX indicators but freeing itself from the threshold effect, which is a drawback to their use. The idea is to count the number of noise events, weighting each event according to the level of instantaneous annoyance it is likely to generate for local residents. To make progress on the feasibility of developing such an indicator and to confirm its relevance, Bruitparif is proposing to carry out a pilot study on three selected overflown areas in the Île-de-France region, involving around thirty local residents on each occasion. The paper will present the principle behind the creation of this new indicator as well as the pilot study protocol.