Noise is considered a major environmental problem in urban areas, which in recent years has seriously affected people’s health and quality of life. One of the most important solutions for noise mitigation, especially for traffic noise, is the installation of noise barriers. In this paper, an assessment of the acoustic performance of noise barriers in the city of Skopje is presented. The methodology proposes using the ISO 10847:1997 indirect method (measurement technique for determining the insertion loss of a noise barrier).The experimental results from the conducted in-situ measurements have proven that the existing noise barriers, even though with different characteristics, achieve notable insertion loss across the entire noise frequency range, with significant reductions of over 10 dB in the dominant traffic noise frequency band. The research insights confirm that the noise barriers provide an effective solution for traffic noise control, but their advantage is limited against low-frequency noise components and urban noise coming from combined (human made or natural) noise sources. The results provided in this paper fill an important research gap into the noise pollution control in the city. This research provides valuable conclusions that serve as a baseline for improving urban noise action plans and development of further noise reduction strategy in the city.
Anachkova et al. (Sun,) studied this question.