Assessment of Representative Measurement Time Intervals for Environmental Noise Monitoring

Abstract

Road traffic noise monitoring is of great importance for the health of people living in urban areas. Noise monitoring is carried out in several possible ways, depending on the available economic, technical and human resources, as well as the reliability of the measurement results, which is expressed through the measurement uncertainty with the appropriate confidence interval. The paper systematically analyzes the results of long-term continuous environmental noise monitoring at nine distinctive locations next to the main city roads in the territory of the city of Nis (Serbia), with road traffic as the dominant noise source. The goal of the research is to define the season, month and day of the week that are representative of the application of monitoring in practice, in terms of the smallest deviations from the annual values of noise indicators. The results obtained in the paper show that spring, March and Friday as the day of the week best correspond to the set criteria.