Traffic noise is considered by people as one of the most important sources of environmental discomfort. A way to limit the traffic noise is to reduce the noise emission, for example, by using specific low noise pavements, particularly in suburban areas. However, in real situations, it can be difficult to evaluate the impact of a given pavement, because it depends, for example, on the road geometry, the meteorological conditions, or the distance of the receiver position. Finally it can be difficult to select the most appropriate pavement for a given noise reduction objective. In this paper, a simple method is proposed to evaluate the noise impact of a pavement, in typical road geometries and environmental conditions. The proposed approach uses two databases, the first one based on measurements of emission spectra of road vehicles on several typical pavements, the second one made of pre-calculations of noise propagation for typical road configurations. Finally, the method is implemented in an interactive web tool, called DEUFRABASE, which allows one to obtain a fast estimation of the L Aeq (1 h or 24 h) and L den noise levels for various pavements and road configurations, as functions of the traffic flow and composition. By comparing the method with measurements, it is showed that the tool, although based on a restricted number of pavements and on several simplifications, can predict the noise impact of typical road configurations, with an acceptable error, most often less than 2 dB.

Road authorities, freight, and logistic industries face a multitude of challenges in a world changing at an ever growing pace. While globalization, changes in technology, demography, and traffic, for instance, have received much attention over the bygone decades, climate change has not been treated with equal care until recently. However, since it has been recognized that climate change jeopardizes many business areas in transport, freight, and logistics, research programs investigating future threats have been initiated. One of these programs is the Conference of European Directors of Roads’ (CEDR) Transnational Research Programme (TRP), which emerged about a decade ago from a cooperation between European National Road Authorities and the EU. This paper presents findings of a CEDR project called CliPDaR, which has been designed to answer questions from road authorities concerning climate-driven future threats to transport infrastructure. Pertaining results are based on two potential future socio-economic pathways of mankind (one strongly economically oriented “A2” and one more balanced scenario “A1B”), which are used to drive global climate models (GCMs) producing global and continental scale climate change projections. In order to achieve climate change projections, which are valid on regional scales, GCM projections are downscaled by regional climate models. Results shown here originate from research questions raised by European Road Authorities. They refer to future occurrence frequencies of severely cold winter seasons in Fennoscandia, to particularly hot summer seasons in the Iberian Peninsula and to changes in extreme weather phenomena triggering landslides and rutting in Central Europe. Future occurrence frequencies of extreme winter and summer conditions are investigated by empirical orthogonal function analyses of GCM projections driven with by A2 and A1B pathways. The analysis of future weather phenomena triggering landslides and rutting events requires downscaled climate change projections. Hence, corresponding results are based on an ensemble of RCM projections, which was available for the A1B scenario. All analyzed risks to transport infrastructure are found to increase over the decades ahead with accelerating pace towards the end of this century. Mean Fennoscandian winter temperatures by the end of this century may match conditions of rather warm winter season experienced in the past and particularly warm future winter temperatures have not been observed so far. This applies in an even more pronounced manner to summer seasons in the Iberian Peninsula. Occurrence frequencies of extreme climate phenomena triggering landslides and rutting events in Central Europe are also projected to rise. Results show spatially differentiated patterns and indicate accelerated rates of increases.

This paper provides insights into a new landslide hazards project which is part of a national research program on safe and sustainable transport in Germany funded by the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI). Here we report on a work in progress and present selected results of a pilot study conducted prior to the launch of the research program in 2016. The main goal of the landslide hazards project is to assess the future landslide hazard potential for the federal transport system under the influence of climate change. A federal road-related pilot study with focus on developing an approach to this type of hazard assessment was a first step in this direction. The developed approach is based upon a Geographic Information System (GIS) as mapping tool to combine a landslide susceptibility map with spatial datasets of regional climate change projections. Here we present the basic framework of this approach only, and provide information on landslide activity and climate change. This information refers to findings from three example landslide sites in Germany. The purpose of this paper is to introduce these landslide projects of German transport research against the backdrop of the existing national strategy of climate change adaptation.

Various climate projections predict changing climatic parameters like temperature, precipitation, wind speed etc. for Germany. This could have severe impacts on road transport infrastructure as well as road traffic itself. At the Federal Highway Research Institute (Bundesanstalt fur Strassenwesen (BASt)) a strategy was developed to adapt roads and engineering structures to the impacts of climate change. The strategy lAnpassung der Strassenverkehrsinfrastruktur an den Klimawandel (AdSVIS)r comprises currently about 15 projects. On the basis of the identification of the hazards and the combination of the climate and road network data, the road transport infrastructure which might be affected is to be determined. Adaptation measures are to be developed for the identified risk areas and assessed as to their effectiveness. Special attention is given to international cooperation since climate change is a truly global challenge.

Pass-by measurements on streets according to ISO-11819-1 are difficult to perform if traffic density is high. In that case the cars are often too close to fulfill the -6 dB criteria for the level between cars for a valid measurement. To overcome this difficulty array techniques are used to separate even close sound sources. Measurements are presented with multiple cars using array techniques and compared with standard single car measurements. Multiple microphone configurations are optimized, tested and combined with a source separation algorithm in order to resemble the results of single car measurements even with dense traffic.

Die Strassenverkehrsinfrastruktur und der Strassenverkehr muessen sich kuenftig neuen Herausforderungen stellen, wie dem technologischen, demografischen und klimatischen Wandel. Im Hinblick auf den projizierten Klimawandel entwickelte die Bundesanstalt fuer Strassenwesen (BASt) eine Strategie zur der Strassenverkehrsinfrastruktur an den Klimawandel (AdSVIS). Diese Strategie soll dazu beitragen, die Verwundbarkeit des Strassenwesens gegenueber den negativen Folgen des Klimawandels durch Anwendung geeigneter Adaptationsmassnahmen zu mindern. Um das Ziel zu erreichen, wurden vielfaeltige Projekte initiiert. Den zentralen Punkt der Anpassungsstrategie stellt dabei das Projekt Risikoanalyse wichtiger Gueter- und Transitverkehrsachsen unter Einbeziehung von Seehaefen (RIVA) dar. Ziel dieses Projekts ist, eine Methodik fuer die Identifikation, Analyse und Bewertung der Risiken aus den projizierten Klimaaenderungen zu entwickeln und an ausgewaehlten Streckenabschnitten im deutschen Teil des TEN-T (Transeuropaeisches Netz - Transport) zu validieren. Durch dieses hierbei entwickelte und validierte Verfahren soll ferner das gesamte Bundesfernstrassennetz im Hinblick auf die klimabedingten Risiken untersucht und bewertet werden, mit dem Ziel, einen Aktionsplan fuer die erforderlichen Anpassungsmassnahmen zu erstellen. Darueber hinaus befassen sich weitere Projekte des AdSVIS-Programms mit der Anpassung der massgeblichen Regelwerke, beispielsweise mit der Ueberpruefung der Dimensionierungsansaetze von Entwaesserungseinrichtungen und Strassenbefestigungen. Gleichzeitig werden konkrete Anpassungsmassnahmen entwickelt und erprobt. (A) ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: The road transport infrastructure and the road traffic are facing many challenges and will have to be adapted to them. These challenges are technological, demographic and climate change. At the Federal Highway Research Institute (Bundesanstalt fuer Strassenwesen (BASt)) a strategy was developed to adapt roads and engineering structures to the impacts of climate change. This strategy will contribute to the mitigation of the vulnerability of the road transport infrastructure to the negative impacts of climate change by the application of adequate adaptation measures. The aim is to integrate this adaptation strategy into a holistic and sustainable asset management. The strategy consists currently of about 15 projects. The most important project is Risk analysis of key goods and transit axes including seaports': The objective of this project is the development of a methodology to identify, analyze and estimate the risks emerging from the projected climate changes for selected road sections in the German part of the TEN-T (Trans-European Network - Transport). Adaptation measures are to be defined for the identified risk areas and assessed as to their effectiveness. This project is a first approach towards the establishment of a risk management and for the future the entire German federal road network will be examined and appraised to the risks of climate change. Other projects of the AdSVIS program are concerned with the adaptation of the technical guidelines with respect to climate change e. g. in the area of design of road drainage systems and road pavements. At the sometime, practical adaptation measures are being developed and tested. (A)

Following the demand for improving the efficiency of noise barriers without increasing their height, a new procedure has been developed, which allows for extending a typical noise barrier by a line of resonators in a quite efficient way. It is based on numerical investigations including the indirect boundary element method. Several representative calculations are shown which demonstrate how the new approach can be used. The procedure turns out to be computationally very powerful and it seems to be a very promising step towards a more efficient design of sound barriers featuring high effectiveness at moderate overall heights. Measurements at a 20 m wide and 4 m high noise barrier with and without the device will be presented.

Noise barriers are the most common solutions to protect against noise pollution. They are very effective in the mitigation of road noise, but their high effectiveness often involves undesirably huge constructions. Following the demand for improving the efficiency without increasing the heights, a new procedure has been developed, which allows for extending a typical noise barrier by a line of resonators in a quite efficient way. It is based on numerical investigations including the indirect boundary element method. Several representative calculations are shown which demonstrate how the new approach can be used. The procedure turns out to be computationally very powerful and it seems to be a very promising step toward a more efficient design of sound barriers featuring high effectiveness at moderate overall heights. Measurements at a 20 m wide and 4 m high noise barrier with and without the device will be presented.

Road noise in a wider context of the abatement of road traffic noise. French and German institutes headed by the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees (LCPC) in Nantes and the Bundesanstalt fur Strasenwesen (BASt) in Bergisch Gladbach cooperated throughout this project, which finished in March 2009. The theoretical approach is based on the SPERoN (Statistical Physical Explanation of Rolling Noise) model developed by one of the partners and already implemented and tested in Germany on a large set of measurements carried out at the experimental site in Sperenberg near Berlin. In the first stage of the project, the model was validated for different kinds of French road surfaces. In a second step, the model was applied as an adapted tool to design and build new textures for low noise road surfaces. Finally, in a third step, the results issued from SPERoN were used as an input for outdoor sound propagation models developed in France and Germany in order to estimate the effect of this optimised model-aided low noise pavement in the far field, close to the facades. A ranking with other typical German and French pavements lead to a common database (DEUFRABASE).

In the framework of a DEUFRAKO (German/French cooperation) project on the Prediction and Propagation of Rolling Noise (P2RN), it has been proposed to rank the different German and French road pavements with respect to noise for different long distance configurations representative of real road topographies, ground characteristics and meteorological situations. After identification of those typical 28 configurations, the attenuations between a reference point in the near field and several receiving points in the far field have been computed according to the most relevant and adapted modelling methods currently available. The main goal being the accuracy of the prediction and not the computation time, analytical (ray tracing) and numerical (BEM, Parabolic Equation) approaches have been implemented. In the following, a technique permitting to estimate day and night LAeq and Lden has been used to classify the various pavements for the whole configurations. All those results have been gathered in a common database (DEUFRABASE) which will be directly available on the website of the authors' Institutes. The paper deals with the description of the ranking procedures, how the database is implemented on the web and how to use it for road traffic noise prediction.