ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Effects of Singular Noisy Events on Long-Term
Environmental Noise Measurements
Carlos Prieto Gajardo1, Juan Miguel Barrigón Morillas1, Valentín Gómez Escobar1, Rosendo Vílchez-Gómez1, Guillermo Rey Gozalo1,2
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1Acoustic Laboratory, Department of Applied Physics, Escuela Politécnica,
University of Extremadura. Avda. de la Universidad s/n, 10003 Cáceres, Spain
2Universidad Autónoma de Chile, 5 Poniente 1670, 3460000 Talca, Chile
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2014;23(6):2007-2017
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
One important question to solve is if singular noisy events can affect noise levels in the short, medium,
and long term. If the answer is yes and these singular noisy events are present or absent during the monitoring
of a place, then long-term noise indices can be overestimating or underestimating, respectively, the noise
impact. Therefore, it is necessary to observe and quantify the contribution of these singular noisy events to the
annual indices established by the European directive [night level (Ln) and day-evening-night level (Lden)]. As
an example of this situation, for a whole year this study quantified in 24 measurement points how some representative
sound indices were affected during the FIFA World Cup celebrated in South Africa during summer
2010 in three Spanish cities (Cáceres, Málaga, and Madrid). It is shown how very short singular events lasting
only a few hours can alter appreciably the values of annual noise indices.