Characterization of damages from road traffic noise in life cycle impact assessment: A method based on emission and propagation models
Résumé
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique widely used to comprehensively characterize the environmental
impacts of human activities, and covers a broad range of environmental impact categories.
Despite the recognized significant impact of environmental noise on public health, mostly because of
road traffic, until now noise has not been systematically included in LCA. Research has showed, however,
that the addition of the impacts of noise could significantly change the interpretation of LCA results,
specifically considering the importance of road transportation in the global economy. This paper proposes
a method to calculate characterization factors (CF) for life cycle impact assessment of noise
emissions from road traffic on human health. The method builds on up-to-date noise emission and
propagation models. It was successfully tested on a demonstrative test bed case, which allowed us to
identify the most suitable elementary flows, and draw the spatial variability of the CF and the associated
uncertainties. Finally, the case proved that the consideration of noise could double the magnitude of the
human health damages due to road transportation, which could significant affect policy decisions.