The use of emergence descriptors for noise in dwellings evaluation

This paper introduces emergence descriptors as a possibility for noise in dwellings characterization. They are less known in environmental acoustics, than widely used energy-based and statistical descriptors. Previous studies in domain of traffic and railway noise showed that in situations when noise level highly varies in time, emergence descriptors are better correlated with annoyance noise has on population. Therefore, conducted research studied ability of such descriptors to capture dynamic of noise generated during normal home activities with the aim to reflect the real state of how noisy neighbors are. Strengths and weaknesses of emergence descriptors are evaluated through comparison with energy-based and statistical descriptors.