WEBNOISE
NOISE CALCULATIONS MADE EASY
Webnoise is an online program with which you can easily make noise calculations. The program consists of three modules for making calculations for various types of construction noise. Webnoise has been designed to increase productivity and user friendliness, and is therefore Windows oriented in design. Also no specific acoustic knowledge is required, because the user doesn’t have to draw up complex calculation models.
CHALLENGE
Early 2005 I was approached by Westerveld Advies, with the challenge to build an online sound calculation platform for work planners in the Dutch railway construction industry, as an alternative to the time consuming and expensive traditional noise researches they were required to have done before.
After we consulted with customers and users about their demands and wishes, in brief the following requirements were set:
acoustic knowledge is not required,
the platform should be user-friendly in design,
meet Dutch noise regulations and calculation standards,
accessible through internet and no installation of software necessary,
standard database with sound source details, but adding own equipment also possible,
automatic generation of standard report with custom company logo,
calculations should be fast and reliable,
the solution should be cost saving.
A ballast cleaner specialises in cleaning the railway track ballast of impurities.
A pile driver is used to drive piles into soil to provide foundation support.
SOLUTION
Even though I had only little prior knowledge of web development, my experience in acoustic consultancy doing traditional noise researches in the late nineties, as well as the universal automated acoustic simulation model I designed and programmed for railway yards around the new millennium, appeared to be very valuable to successfully complete this challenge.
The first big part of the challenge was to design an automated and simplified acoustic model, that was fast enough to give instantaneous results running on a webserver, while being accurate enough for its results not to deviate more then a few tenths of a decibel from what a traditional noise research would have given.
The basic assumption for the acoustic model, was the fact that work along a section of railroad moves forward in an approximately straight line. As a result, a straight line source (representing the work activity) forms the basis for the model, where the receiver point can be anywhere in the area surrounding this work line.
A maximum of 50 sectors, of equal length, is then put onto the work line. In each sector, a source is located that represents the total noise emission of that sector.
The actual number of sectors and the sector length, Webnoise ultimately uses for its calculations, depends on the position of the receiver point among other things. The three animated gifs below give a quick insight into some of the effects that were taken into account, for optimising the algorithm behind the fast and accurate acoustic models Webnoise generates.
The second big part of the challenge was to design and develop a user friendly interface for the application, that was approachable enough for any work planner to use effectively directly after opening it for the first time, without prior acoustic knowledge.
Because the entire construction industry was using Microsoft Windows at the time, and users were not so familiar with web based software yet, we decided to give the Webnoise platform a familiar look right from the start. Therefore, I built an online Windows environment that looked and felt just like your desktop computer at that time. Some of the features that we included, are:
open multiple windows at the same time, that can be moved, minimized and brought forward,
each window has a menu bar with pull down menus, a toolbar with icons, tool tips and a help line in the status bar,
switch between Dutch and English at all times while everything else stays the same,
no data loss on accidental closing of the web browser, application reopens in last status automatically,
explorer module for file management includes features like nested folders and copy, move and delete files,
extensive support options including video tutorials, a users manual and a support forum, each of which open in their own module window,
application is built on a LAMP software bundle, typically suited for dynamic web pages and web applications.
Besides the screenshot at the top of this page, the video tutorials below give a good insight into how the application functions and behaves. It’s the only part of the application that is in Dutch only though.
The first version of Webnoise was released in the summer of 2005, and the service is currently still actively being used by companies in both rail, road and utility construction, among which:
