Assessing attitudes toward military blast noise.

Existing impact assessment procedures for large weapon noise or blast noise do not fully meet the military’s noise management needs. Military noise impacts currently are assessed in terms of the response metric annoyance as predicted by a long‐term average noise level metric. This method has proven to be unsatisfactory for impulsive military noise. As a result, ERDC‐CERL and SERDP have launched a series of field studies to enhance the understanding of human response to military blast noise. An overview of the four research protocols employed in this project will be presented, and the most recent findings from a qualitative personal interview study and a complaint and annoyance comparison study will be given. The preliminary results indicate that residents living near military installations adapt to the basic noise environment over time, notice unusually large noise events or events that produce house vibrations, and indicate that those who file complaints are significantly more annoyed on average than the...