MSCA-COFUND-CLEAR-Doc - PhD Position #CD22-11: Multi-scale urban road traffic noise assessment methods

Context

The health effects of noise have been widely demonstrated: annoyance, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular effects, etc. Noise is also the source of strong socio-spatial inequalities. However, despite the legislative framework that has been progressively put in place, in particular the European directive 2002/49/EC which requires all cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants to produce and disseminate noise maps of their road infrastructures, the links between mobility and noise, and their impact in terms of environmental justice, remain partly unknown.

In particular, the assessment methods used in practice rarely include road traffic modeling, and are based instead on simple assumptions of volume or speed reduction, which are very limiting. Modelling chains integrating traffic modelling have recently been developed, which allow to describe the impact of traffic regulation actions (modification of an intersection, reduction of the regulatory speed, etc.) on traffic flow, on the subsequent noise emissions and finally on the resulting noise levels. The traffic models used are either microscopic traffic models (SUMO, Symuvia, Vissim) or multi-agent systems (MATSim). The former allow to focus on the fine impact on a street scale, by modeling the interactions between vehicles, while the latter methods are rather dedicated to studies on the metropolitan scale, and are based on a modeling of the agents' activity.

Despite the progress enabled by each of these modelling chains, their use in an environmental assessment framework remains rather rare to date, and many research questions remain unanswered. In particular, the acoustic indicators to be used for the assessment must reflect the impacts more accurately (taking into account perceptual and environmental aspects). These reflections on indicators require adapting the modeling chains (individualizing vehicle emissions, taking into account the spatial and temporal dynamics of exposures, etc.), and taking into account the limitations associated with these modeling chains at the different spatial scales of interest.

These research challenges have motivated the collaboration between UMRAE (Gustave Eiffel University) and KTH. These two units have an internationally recognised and complementary research activity on the coupling between traffic models and acoustic models, as well as innovative thinking on the study of acoustic impacts and associated indicators. This collaboration was strengthened by the visit of a doctoral student from KTH, Johan Nygren, to the UMRAE in 2022, which led to progress in the definition of acoustic impacts.

The objective of the thesis is to continue this work by proposing a methodological framework for the evaluation of the acoustic impacts of road traffic in urban areas, applied through different case studies.

Scientific material

The thesis will rely on operational open-source modeling chains, using NoiseModelling (environmental noise prediction model), MATSim (large-scale agent-based transport simulation), SUMO and Symuvia (microscopic traffic models).

The PhD student will be integrated in a facilitating research environment, since a research project, SYMEXPO, which aims at consolidating these modelling chains, will take place simultaneously at UMRAE/UGE. As such, the student will interact with the project team, and in particular its development engineer, which will facilitate the technical realization of the thesis work.

Within the framework of the mobility planned at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), the PhD student will be part of the "ECO2 Vehicle Design" center, a national center of excellence bringing together all the major actors of the Swedish automotive sector (car and truck manufacturers, regulatory bodies, research institutes, etc.) around multi-disciplinary societal issues, creating for the PhD student direct interactions with these partners.

Finally, two theses on similar themes, one at KTH and the other at UMRAE/UGE, will reinforce the emulation around the subject.

Work programme

The first objective of the thesis will consist in a reflection on the acoustic indicators, integrating a state of the art and relying on the recent research results in economics and perception of the two partner laboratories.

Then, the doctoral candidate will acquire in-depth understanding of the existing modeling chains in order to adapt these to enable the evaluation of the indicators retained for the evaluation. In particular, it will be necessary to reflect on the problems of scale (evaluations ranging from the scale of the street to that of the metropolis), and on the limits contained in each of the approaches. Hybrid forms of modelling will be proposed, for example by statistically integrating the results from the chains of microscopic models within the chains of models based on the multi-agent systems.

Finally, the definition of relevant case studies, highlighting for example the effects of urban logistics or noisy vehicles, will allow to propose a methodological framework for the evaluation of the acoustic impacts of road traffic. These case studies will be defined in collaboration with local authorities, and will be based on sites where the input traffic data necessary for the implementation are already available (Ghent, Lyon or Stockholm).

References

·Aumond P., Fortin N., Can A. (2020). Overview of the NoiseModelling open-source software version 3 and its applications, Procedings of INTERNOISE 2020.

·Can A., Aumond P., Bécarie C., Leclercq L. (2019). Dynamic approach for the study of the spatial impact of road traffic noise at peak hours, Proceedings of ICA 2019.

·Le Bescond V., Can A., Aumond P., Gastineau P. (2021). Open-source modelling chain based on multi-agent systems for dynamic assessment of road traffic noise exposure, Transportation Research part D, 94(2):102793, 2021.

·Nygren J., Boij S., Rumpler R., O’Reilly, CJ. (2020). An investigation of allocation strategies for internalizing the impact from traffic noise. Proceedings of ISMA 2020.

·Venkataraman S., & Rumpler R. (2020). Acoustic Study of Nighttime Deliveries in Stockholm within the Project CIVITAS Eccentric. Proceedings of Forum Acusticum 2020.

·Baclet, S., Venkataraman, S. & Rumpler, R. (2021). A methodology to assess the impact of driving noise from individual vehicles in an urban environment. Proceedings of ICSV27.