Effect of noise dose bin-width on dose-response curves

Abstract

Dose-response curves lie at the heart of most global community noise laws/policies. Yet, there is no standard on how to choose the noise dose bins that underlie the curves which describe the relationship between noise and annoyance. This paper strives to understand whether the binning process affects the modeled relationship by examining common binning and curve-fitting procedures. It was found that the subjective choice of bin-width can considerably affect the resulting dose-response curves. The implications of these findings are discussed and recommendations are given to ameliorate the situation so that future studies and policies can avoid these potential pitfalls.