Download design and implementation of on−line database of noise sources

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ON−LINE DATABASE OF NOISE
SOURCES
Jelena Tomić, Nebojša Bogojević, Bojan Tatić, Zlatan Šoškić
Faculty of Mechanical and Civil Engineering, University of Kragujevac, [email protected]
Abstract - The paper presents the concept, structure and
implementation of relational database for description of
noise sources, which is developed within the framework of
the project “Development of methodologies and means for
noise protection of urban areas”. Database is founded on
results of research activities connected to description of
noise sources, performed in European Union during the
previous decade. The research activities are the basis for
contemporary noise protection standards and methods, and
they showed that development of a public national database
of noise sources contributes significantly to noise mapping
and noise protection planning. The database presented in the
paper enables detailed description of point sources and line
sources by storing data about sound power, spectra and
spatial distribution, and for complex noise sources provides
possibility for storing mathematical relationships which
describe noise emitted by the sources. The access to the
database data is possible through standard SQL queries,
which is suitable for development of software tools and
components for noise mapping. The database is accessible
on−line over the Internet, with read rights granted without
limitation, whereas rights for writing the data are granted
only to developers.
1. INTRODUCTION
During the last decade European Union has been
implementing the strategy for combating noise according to
the Environmental Noise Directive (2002/49/EC) [1], which
was passed by the European Parliament in June of 2002.
Under this directive, Member States were obliged to make
strategic noise maps no later than 30th June 2007.
Furthermore, the competent authorities, based on results of
noise mapping, had to draw up action plans designed to
manage noise issues and effects, including noise reduction if
necessary, no later than 18th July 2008. In accordance to
strategy, FP5 project "Harmonoise" [2], FP6 project
"Imagine" [3], and FP7 project "Silence" [4] were
established. "Harmonoise" project developed common
European noise prediction models for road and railway
traffic. Project "Imagine" improved the existing models and
developed common European noise prediction models for
aircraft and industrial noise. Project "Silence" has been
developing methodologies for drawing of Noise Action
Plans. Also various non-European projects [5][6][7][8] were
established to support combating noise.
As Serbia is in accession process to the European Union,
Serbian legislation related to noise protection is in
accordance to Environmental Noise Directive. Law on
environment noise protection [9], which was passed by
Serbian parliament in 2009, and following by-laws
[10][11][12] determinate principles of assessment of noise
impact, noise mapping and drawing of Noise Action Plans.
Serbian Ministry of Education and Science funded project
"Development of methodologies and means for noise
protection of urban environment" (acronym "urbaNoise")
[13], which should support providing measures prescribed by
legislation, that are still not provided. The project is realized
by three major Serbian state universities, University of
Kragujevac, represented by Faculty of Mechanical
Engineering Kraljevo, University of Niš, represented by
Faculty of Occupational Safety and University of Belgrade,
represented by the Faculty of Traffic Engineering. The
project goals are:
 development of national noise assessment methodologies
harmonized with EU;
 development of national database of noise sources;
 development of software tools for local noise mappings;
 construction of laboratory facilities for testing of acoustic
materials;
 design of modular noise barriers from waste materials.
Databases represent significant tool for data collection,
classification and analyses, what is important for
development of models for noise prediction and its further
improvement. While the "Harmonoise" and "Imagine"
projects provided databases for prediction models of railway
noise, aircraft noise and industrial noise, database developed
within "urbaNoise" project is intended to describe industrial
and communal noise sources. Communal sources, like noise
of public service facilities, schools and nurseries, recreational
objects, sport facilities, workshops, shopping malls and other
noise sources typical for urban life, are not included in EU
projects.
This paper presents Serbian national database for urban noise
sources developed within "urbaNoise" project. The second
section of the paper defines requests for creating database of
noise sources, which structure is described in the third
section. In the end of the work, after describing database
implementation, conclusions are given with ideas for further
usage and improvement of the database.
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2. REQUESTS
Databases of noise sources represent significant tool for
noise mapping purposes as well as for statistical analyses. As
concluded in project "Imagine", creation of national
databases is necessary due to differences between vehicles,
road and rail structures, industrial sources in various
countries, and also from cultural differences that affect noise
sources.
The Serbian national database of noise sources is intended to
describe industrial and communal noise sources. Noise
emitted by communal or industrial sources may depend on
many parameters, but database should be simple and practical
to use, so it should contain minimal number of data that
describe noise source. Also, measurements and collection of
such data often require extensive time and expertise, so the
proper data selection represents important goal in the
database design. However, all data important for prediction
of noise levels according to the relevant models must be
included. The data which are needed for the models used in
the project "urbaNoise" for noise mapping are:






Type of noise source (point source or linear source)
Noise type (continuous, variable, intermittent, impulse)
Emitted sound power level
Emitted sound power level spectrum
Directivity
Name of the source
The information about sound power can be submitted in two
ways: by numeric values of emitted sound power and
octave/third octave power spectrum or by mathematical
formula that enables calculation of emitted sound power.
In purpose of data visibility and easier and efficient statistical
analysis, noise sources in database are organized in the
following way:
 The first level, category of the source, enables grouping
of noise sources according its function;
 The second level, subcategory of the source, enables
classification within a certain category according to
performance or construction characteristics of the noise
source.
The database is not intended to be used only by participants
of project "urbaNoise", but also to permit public access to
reading collected data, so the third parties could use data as
input in software tools for noise mapping. It should be
accessible over internet and should respond to standard SQL
queries. Taking into consideration that credibility and
integrity of the data in database must not be threatened, data
submitting should be restricted only to participants of
"urbaNoise" project. For security reasons, input access
should be organized in two levels, operator level and
administrator level. Operator level is lower, and allows
operator to input data which describe noise sources.
Administrator level, as higher, enables administrator to input
categories and subcategories as well as access rights
management.
3. DATABASE STRUCTURE
Figure 1 presents the Enhanced Entity−Relationship (EER)
diagram of the database structure. EER diagrams illustrate
the logical structure of databases, e.g., the relationships
between entities (tables) in a database. Each entity (for
example a person) is described by its attributes (name,
gender, age might be attributes of the person entity). An
attribute or set of attributes that uniquely identifies a
particular entity is primary key (for example, social security
number might be the primary key for the person entity).
Foreign keys are attributes that define relationships between
entities (for example, between persons, their documents or
possessions). The attributes of a foreign key in one entity are
the attributes of a primary key in another entity (for example,
license number may be a foreign key for the person entity).
"1-to-1" relationship between two tables indicates that each
record in the first table corresponds to one, and only one,
record in the second table (one person has one driving
license). "1-to-many" relationship indicates that each record
in the first table corresponds to one or more records in the
second table, but each record in the second table corresponds
to only one record in the first table (one person may have
several cars).
Noise source is represented by the table Source, which
contains the following attributes (columns):
 SourceID, the primary key of the table
 source_name, the name of the source
 source_description, the textual description of the source
 Subcategory_SubcategoryTypeID, key to the subcategory
of the source
 SourceType_SourceTypeID, key to the type of the source
 NoiseType_NoiseTypeID, key to the type of the emitted
noise
 PowerDesciption_PowerDescriptionID, key to the
method of description of the emitted power
Administrator sets the data on source types, noise types,
categories and subcategories into the corresponding tables:
SourceType, NoiseType, Category and Subcategory,
respectively. When entering data about noise source, operator
selects one of the values contained in those tables. Tables
NoisaType, SourceType and Subcategory are linked by
"1−to−many" relationships to the table Source, so foreign
keys SourceType_SourceTypeID, NoiseType_NoiseTypeID
and Subcategory_SubcategoryID determine to which source
type, noise type and subcategory noise source belongs. Table
Subcategory contains foreign key Category_CategoryID, that
keeps information about category to which subcategory
belongs.
Noise source may be described by emitted power and spectral
components of power or by mathematical equation. The key
PowerDesciption_PowerDescriptionID in the table Source
determines which description method for noise source is
used, i.e., which of the tables PowerSpectrum or
NoiseEquation contains the corresponding data.
The table PowerSpectrum is linked by "1−to−1" relationship
to the table Source by the key Source_SourceID. This table
contains information about emitted sound power level and
emitted sound power spectrum. Operator may enter octave or
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third octave power spectrum. Emitted sound power by the
noise source is the only mandatory attribute.
Figure 1: EER diagram of the database of noise sources used in "urbaNoise" project
The table NoiseEquation is linked by "1−to−1" relationship
to the table Source by the key Source_SourceID. This table
contains information about mathematical formula that
enables calculation of the emitted sound power.
Mathematical formula is stored in form of picture with .png
or .jpg extension in the column equation. Column type keeps
information about type of uploaded picture file (.png or .jpg).
Textual explanation and content of the formula are stored in
the column description. Optional, operator may enter textual
expression of the formula in some programming language,
which is stored in the column formula.
The information about directivity of the source emission is
entered to the table Directivity. The table Directivity is linked
by "1−to−many" relationship to the table Source by the key
Source_SourceID. For every noise source, sound power and
octave/third octave power spectrum can be submitted for
several directions. Each direction is determined by attributes
x, y and z, which represent point in the coordinate systems
with noise source as origin.
4. IMPLEMENTATION
The database was created using MySQL database engine and
it is running under Linux operating system on the web server
of Faculty of Mechanical Engineering Kraljevo. The main
reasons to design SQL database were high speed data
handling, scalability, security and ability to support
significantly more database users than Microsoft Access,
which was used in the projects “Harmonoise” and “Imagine”.
The database is developed by Group for Software and
Hardware support and applied and administered by Group for
Methodologies for Noise Impact Assessment.
The user interface to the database is developed using PHP
programming language which enables generation of active
HTML pages. The interactive user interface combined with
presented database gives possibility to less experienced users
to manipulate with new and collected data. The designed user
interface enables complete database manipulation which
means entering new data, editing and deleting existing data,
preview collected data in HTML as well as generating
reports in PDF format.
The access to the database is possible over the internet
address www.mfkv.kg.ac.rs/urbanoise/dbnoise. Due to safety
and security reasons, the access to the database is planned to
be realized in two levels. The collected data will be publicly
available on the given internet address, but the data
manipulation will be granted only to the developer team and
project participants.
The data which are stored in the database may be
interactively filtered by categories and subcategories of the
urban noise sources. The general criteria when forming
categories and subcategories of noise sources are:
 Categories and subcategories should logically
organize noise sources according to their main
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functions and construction characteristics (for
example motors, pumps, fans, etc.).

Categories and subcategories should be selected to
include
statistically
relevant
number
of
representatives.

Quality of the source in terms of noise emissions
and extent of applied noise control will be
categorized into "poor", "average" and "good” only.

Parameter variations will be made in steps that lead
to differences in the overall noise level of about at
least 2 dB.
Data exchange between the database and the third party
software tools for noise mapping may be realized through
SQL query or XML. SQL (Structured Query Language) is a
programming language designed for accessing, making and
managing databases. SQL queries perform data retrieval,
inserting/updating of data, and creation of data objects such
as SQL databases and SQL tables. As database should be
publicly accessible, SQL query will be the basic tool for data
reading. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a markup
language designed to transport and storing of data. It is the
most common tool for data transmissions between all sorts of
applications.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The database presented in this paper was developed for
collecting and storing data that describe industrial and
communal noise sources. Also, it may be used for other point
or line noise sources with known emitted sound power and/or
directivity.
The main purpose of database is its usage by software tools
for production of noise maps. Using SQL query or XML the
third party software tools for noise mapping may read the
data from the database. Data collecting is also significant for
statistical analyses that may reveal relations between sources’
parameters and emitted sound power.
Experiences gained in "Harmonoise" and "Imagine" projects
were used during development of presented database, but the
main improvement is reduction of database structure in
comparison to the databases developed in mentioned
projects, what simplified using of database without losing of
accuracy.
Future work on database improvement should be headed in
two directions:
 increasing of number of collected noise sources and
defined categories in the database;

description of noise emission by mathematical
formulae in order to improve the process of noise
mapping, if it is possible.
6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to express their gratitude to Serbian
Ministry of Education and Science for support through
project TR37020.
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