An Evaluation of Urban Environmental Noise Pollution in Durres Municipality

Abstract

Durres is the second most populous place on the Republic of Albania. This paper was focused in the evaluation of noise level at different areas of Durres Municipality which were categorized based on their activities like industrial, commercial and residential. The main purpose of environmental noise monitoring was to assess the situation in Durres Municipality, to value the degree of impact on citizens and to create a database to better address the problems, in order to build an effective action plan to improve the situation in problem areas. Monitoring has two basic objectives, such as: to protect us from noise that hinders and disrupts our daily activity and to protect us in the future from increasing noise levels that would bring concerns to people and quality of the environment. To realize this study was used TESTO 816-1 supply that measures noise intensity level of a certain area. Measurements were carried out in different conditions of humidity and wind velocity, during morning and night time, from February 2019 to December 2020. Duration of each measurement was 15 min. The results of this study revealed that the average equivalent noise level was: i) in the commercial area (during morning time 51.92 dB, during night time 46.8 dB), in the industrial area (during morning time 57.69 dB, during night time 45.31 dB) and in the residential area (during morning time 53.59 dB, during night time 44.46 dB). As a conclusion it was evidenced that the noise levels for all the areas were over the permissible levels of 50 dB (during morning) and for commercial and industrial area were over 45 dB (during night). Also it was concluded that the consequences of these high levels cause moderate and serious annoyance for residents during the day and sleep disturbances (if windows are open) during the night. This paper suggests some improvements to decrease side effects of noise pollution.