Study of the acoustic climate in the area surrounding a railway stopover

The main objective of this Thesis project is to investigate the soundscape in Milano-Martesana Stopover through binaural recording with a focus on some psychoacoustic parameters such as Loudness, Sharpness, Roughness, Tonality and Fluctuation Strength. After a brief introduction about railway noise and its growing interest in scientific research, the study aims to present a detailed description of the values of these parameters in a particular environment: railway stopover with various kind of buildings surroundings, such as houses, school, and library. Railway stopover is a place where trains are stored for maintenance operations, cleaning operations, or just attending the next run. After an accurate inspection, five strategic point were chosen to evaluate the above-mentioned parameters in different conditions of work, and in presence of trains or not. Moreover, because of wind, we selected precise frames for each record in order to exclude the wind contribution and obtain data as real as possible.