Jiang, L. and Kang, J. (2016) Combined acoustical and visual performance of noise barriers in mitigating the environmental impact of motorways. Science of the Total Environment, 543 (Part A). pp. 52-60. ISSN 0048-9697
Abstract
This study investigated the overall performance of noise barriers in mitigating environmental impact of motorways, taking into consideration their effects on reducing noise and visual intrusions of moving traffic, but also potentially inducing visual impact themselves. A laboratory experiment was carried out, using computer-visualised video scenes and motorway traffic noise recordings to present experimental scenarios covering two traffic levels, two distances of receiver to road, two types of background landscape, and five barrier conditions including motorway only, motorway with tree belt, motorways with 3 m timber barrier, 5 m timber barrier, and 5 m transparent barrier. Responses from 30 participants of university students were gathered and perceived barrier performance analysed. The results show that noise barriers were always beneficial in mitigating environmental impact of motorways, or made no significant changes in environmental quality when the impact of motorways was low. Overall, barriers only offered similar mitigation effect as compared to tree belt, but showed some potential to be more advantageous when traffic level went high. 5 m timber barrier tended to perform better than the 3 m one at the distance of 300 m but not at 100 m possibly due to its negative visual effect when getting closer. The transparent barrier did not perform much differently from the timber barriers but tended to be the least effective in most scenarios. Some low positive correlations were found between aesthetic preference for barriers and environmental impact reduction by the barriers.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 Elsevier B.V. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Science of The Total Environment. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
Keywords: | Traffic noise; Visual impact; Noise barrier; Audio-visual performance; Multisensory perception |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Architecture (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 19 Feb 2016 13:51 |
Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2016 09:00 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.11.010 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.11.010 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:95317 |