Supercomputing grid-based services for hearing protection and acoustical urban planning, research and education

Abstract

Specific computational environments, so-called domain grids, are developed within the PLGrid Plus project in order to prepare specialized IT solutions, i.e., dedicated software implementations and hardware (infrastructure adaptation), suited for particular research group demands. One of the PLGrid Plus domain grids, presented in this paper, is Acoustics. The article describes in detail two kinds of the acoustic domain services. The first can be used to calculate noise maps of large city areas, and is called “Noise Map”. The second, called the “Hearing” service, enables simulations of noise impact on the human hearing system. Several kinds of usage scenarios of the developed services are also presented and illustrated by exemplary results. The infrastructure and the software developed can be utilized mainly for research and education purposes. The engineered software is intended for creating maps of noise threat for roads, railways and industrial sources. Integration of the software services with a distributed sensor network enables to automatically update the noise maps for a specific time period. A unique feature of the developed software is the possibility to estimate the auditory effects, which are caused by the exposure to noise. This estimation is based on the calculated noise levels and on a given exposure period. The outcomes of this research study are presented in form of a cumulative noise dose and characteristics of the temporary threshold shift.