EU Road Noise Contours for 2021 Based on High-Intensity Traffic Data

Noise contours for the base year 2021 were created within the framework of the EU Environmental Noise Directive. The dataset is produced every five years and is based on provincial roads with an intensity exceeding 3 million vehicles per year. However, the traffic intensities used are from 2019, as 2020 and 2021 volumes were lower due to COVID-19 measures.

Use Cases

• Modeling environmental noise pollution based on road traffic intensity data.
• Assessing compliance with the EU Environmental Noise Directive based on reported noise contours.
• Analyzing the impact of COVID-19 measures on traffic patterns and subsequent noise modeling.
• Planning urban infrastructure and mitigation strategies based on noise contour maps.

Strengths

• Created under the EU Environmental Noise Directive, providing a policy-relevant framework.
• Focuses on high-intensity roads with traffic exceeding 3 million vehicles per year.
• Uses traffic data from 2019 to avoid anomalously low volumes from the COVID 2020-2021 period.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The actual data year (2019 traffic) differs from the nominal base year (2021).

Provenance

Source

Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties

Collection Method

Created within the framework of the EU Environmental Noise Directive.

Time Range

Base year 2021, using traffic intensities from 2019.

Freshness

Produced every five years; last update date is unknown.

Geography

Likely covers areas within the EU, specific to provincial roads meeting the intensity threshold.