Solution details
Platform:
Desktop
Description:
The Sound module of CE Desktop calculates where warning sirens can be heard, directly in ArcGIS Pro. Civil protection agencies, municipalities, fire and rescue services and the engineers who work for them use it to design outdoor warning siren networks, to check whether existing sirens still reach everyone after a town grows, and to show which siren to add, raise, turn or replace. Sound is a licensed module of CE Desktop and can be licensed on its own for a siren programme. Each siren stores its position, height, azimuth, tilt, frequency and sound power, with horizontal and vertical directivity patterns kept like antenna patterns. Values come from the manufacturer's datasheet, as is usual for civil-defence sirens under DIN VDE 0828-1: the level quoted at 30 m is converted to free-field sound power. Propagation follows one of two standards. ISO 9613-2 adds divergence, atmospheric absorption, ground effect, screening by terrain and buildings, directivity and the meteorological correction C0. CNOSSOS-EU, the method of the EU Environmental Noise Directive, calculates each path under favourable and homogeneous conditions and combines them by their share of time. Each land cover class carries a ground factor from 0 (hard) to 1 (soft), and every receiver uses its real terrain and building profile, so the acoustic shadows behind hills and building blocks show on the map. The output is a sound pressure level raster. Thresholds such as 70 and 80 dB turn it into audibility zones, the basis for hearing-probability maps, and standard ArcGIS tools count area and population per district. The Siren Sound Prediction geoprocessing tool runs the same calculation from ModelBuilder or Python (ArcPy) for selected sirens or a whole layer. A county in Texas runs its outdoor warning siren network on CE Desktop with the Sound module and has given a signed reference letter.
Industries:
Homeland Security,Public Safety