Assessing outdoor noise in the Birkirkara-Mriehel area

Abstract

Noise pollution in Malta and more specifically in the Birkirkara-Mrieħel region is not studied. This is mainly due to lack of regulations as well as due to the lack of management plans set in place to monitor and reduce high levels of noise. The area of study was chosen because it incorporated three different land-use types, which were domestic, agricultural and industrial zones. Noise was monitored and compared between the three different zones, as well as between different hours within the day time frame (7a.m.-7p.m.). Measurements were taken during the peak periods in weekdays. Initially, the potential of smartphones for future crowd-sourced assessment for noise pollution and/or their use for the identification of unhealthy noise levels was investigated. This was done by comparing the data collected by various phone makes with that recorded by professional sound level meters. The results derived from this study showed that noise was louder in industrial zones than in domestic zones and that agricultural zones were as loud as domestic ones. It also showed that there were variations between noise in the morning and noise in the afternoon in the industrial area, but there were no significant differences between morning and afternoon measurements for the domestic and the agricultural zone. Results also showed that there is the possibility of using smartphones to measure noise however measurements are not accurate enough to fall within the range required for professional noise-measuring equipment, and results are influenced by the phone brand and by the phone application used to collect data.