About the DEUFRABASE
"Road traffic is the most dominant source of environmental noise in Europe. It is estimated that 125 million people are affected by noise levels from road traffic greater than 55 decibels (dB) Lden, including more than 37 million exposed to noise levels above 65 dB Lden."
Source: European commission
Even if acoustical reinforcements of building façades and noise barriers are most often used to control and abate traffic noise, low noise pavements allow to reduce trafic noise of few decibels (dB). Following this objective, the initial goal of the DEUFRABASE was to develop a tool in order to evaluate the effect of new (low-noise) pavements, for a large number of road and environmental configurations.
More generally, the DEUFRABASE allows to compare the effects of different road surfaces in typical road configurations. This can be useful for practitioners (acousticians, engineers) in order to select the "best" road pavements, according to a real situation.
The DEUFRABASE has been developed in the framework of research projects managed by the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Development and Networks (Ifsttar) in France and the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) in Germany, under the aegis of the bilateral Franco-German scientific and technical research program (DEUFRAKO) and with the financial support of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME).
The present DEUFRABASE is a new version of the database that was first hosted by the BASt.