| Abstract |
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), in its efforts to provide decent housing and a suitable living environment, is concerned with noise as a major source of environmental pollution. To this end, these guidelines are presented to provide site screening techniques. The procedures described have been developed so that people without technical training will be able to assess the exposure of a housing site to present and future noise conditions. Assessment is designed as an evaluation of the site's exposure to three major sources of noise--aircraft, roadways, and railways. Information needed to make the assessment is listed at the beginning of each section under headings which indicate the most likely source from which to obtain the information. Evaluation of the site exposure is given in terms of acceptability categories: clearly acceptable, normally acceptable, normally unacceptable, and clearly unacceptable. Final evaluation is determined according to the least favorable category found for any of the individual source evaluations. A fourth, optional evaluation technique, a Walk-Away Test, is described as useful when previous evaluations leave doubt as to the site's acceptability. Additional items included in these guidelines are evaluation worksheets and charts for calculating data. |
