Geographical - Database
SoundPLAN Geo Database User Inerface
General Overview

All geometry data or model objects is entered into Geo-Files or Layers.  With one or more Geo-Files the user compiles a Situation.  The Situation is the administrative units that represent either a planning stage (current status versus planned version in some years) or a noise type (road versus railway and industry noise). All non geometrical data are managed in standard databases formats so that an exchange of information to other programs can be accomplished with ease.

The Geo-Database has predefined objects to characterize all model geometry and attributes necessary to describe the objects.  The object can be broken down into:

  • General objects (point, line, area & texts)
  • Source objects (point, line, area sources, industrial buildings, roads, railroads & parking lots)
  • Indoor acoustic objects (indoor point, line, area sources, industrial buildings, interior walls, ... interior receivers)
  • Aircraft objects (landing, departing geometry, landing and take-off routes,..)
  • Propapation objects (Buildings, walls, berms, floating barriers, ground definition, mitigation areas, spot heights, elevation lines  ...) and receptors (receiver locations, cross sections, calculation areas).
Data Import and Management

The Geo-Database import following data:

  • ACAD DXF files
  • ArcView Shape Files (Module)
  • ASCII Tables
  • TNM v2.5 Project (Module)
  • Radar Tracks (Module)
  • Elevation Data (xyz, ESRI Grid, Scop, GeoTiff, Elevation Data)
  • DBF
  • QSI (Quatily Standard Interface - DIN 45687)

For project organization the user edits and compiltes the data in various layers to reduce redundancy of data.  For example for most projects the topography is not changing so spot elevation and elevaiton lines can be in one Geo-Files.  In the same project the difference between different models are additional noise sources or changing roads inputs.  In those case we would have separate Geo-Files describing the parameters for each situation.

Depending on the project the user decides on the structuring of the situation and the layers.  Often times the objects that change from situation to situation and objects that stay the same throughout the project are organized in the same layers.  The Situation Manager is an easy tool to compile layers for each situation and to document the content of each layer and describing the Situation. 

Aerial Photos or Bitmaps can be imported to digitize the geometry.  An interface to Google Earth (Cartography Module) allows the import of geo-referenced aerial photos and Google Earth terrain elevation data. 

Model Verification

The verification of the geometry and input parameters is crucial with increasing size of the noise model. The Geo-Database has numerous visual and tabular tools to verify the integrety of the noise model. 

The visual tools include:

  • Site View (all, selected objects, by object type, by Geo-File)
  • 2D Side and Front View (all, selected objects, by object type, by Geo-File)
  • 3D Wire Frame View
  • 3D Solid View
  • Zoom, Rotation, etc.
  • Management of object colors and Displays

Coordinate Operation, Attribute Explorer and Attribute Edior

  • X, Y, Z coordinate operation
  • Overview of all object parameters for all or just selected objects
  • Single or column specific editing function (set, add, subtract, multiple,...

Manipulation of Data

  • Copy & Paste
  • Parallel Objects
  • Filter, spline, cut, sort line geometry
  • Find duplicate objects
  • Building operations
  • Road and Rail Axis & Terrain tools
  • Terrain filter
  • Coordinate Transformation
  • Clean-up overlapping areas

 

Object Input

Each Geo-Database Object is pre-define.  The geometry is entered with x, y and z coordinates.  The object is either digitized (mouse, digitizer tablet) or imported. Each object has specific attribute to describe the geometry, coordinate, height, object identifier and technical attributes (i.e., sound power, idle pattern, absorption, building height, number of floors, ...).  The attributes are used to characterize the relevant information for the noise or air pollution model or information that are of interest in terms of the assessment (recepter name, zoning, source name, group, number of occupants per house, ...)

A object parameter window may have one to three tabs to allow the definition of the object attributes.