Software Development

Significance

Modern noise forecasting is no longer possible without the use of software. As long as everyday noise situations for road traffic noise or rail noise, for industrial noise, commercial noise or sports facility noise have to be assessed, reliable programme packages are used that can handle the noise prediction in a professional and standard-compliant manner.

Beyond the standard

In special situations, the standard is no longer sufficient. For example, in the case of explosion-like booms from mining test tracks or test facilities where explosions of food dusts are tested, other prediction methods are needed that cannot be available in standard software.

Ultimately, this also applies to the so seemingly commonplace wind turbine, which is currently only calculated according to DIN ISO 9613 as standard due to the lack of a special regulation. Actually, a wind turbine is a ‘high-altitude’ source that explicitly does not fall within the scope of this standard. Shooting noise of large military weapons, but also muzzle blasts and bullet booms of rifles and pistols are also not part of the ‘standard’.

Acoustic software

Cervus Consult is your contact for customized acoustic software. Dr. Hirsch and Frank Hammelmann have developed the prognosis software for military shooting noise WinLarm and continue to develop this software on behalf of the Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (i.e. Federal Ministry of Defense).

WinLarm currently manages more than 7000 firing configurations (weapon systems, weapons and ammunition) with different source strengths and directivities, which can be fired from more than a thousand recorded firing systems. These numbers emphasise that noise prediction here requires more than just a sound propagation computation programme. Databases are needed in which the diverse data structures can be stored in an accurate and user-friendly manner.

In modern noise management, even greater demands are placed on data preparation and data maintenance. Cooperative noise management means using organisational and operational measures to control a plant on a daily basis in such a way that it simultaneously operates as economically as possible and with as little noise as possible for the neighbourhood, while complying with the regulations of the Federal Immission Control Act.

For this purpose, the noise management software must fit into the operating and planning software. It must run on site, almost in the background, with little decision-making involved, and offer and automatically work out options that enable the operations planner to make quick and comprehensible decisions.

Management software

Cervus Consult therefore not only takes care of noise, but also of the entire operating software. WinLarm as noise prediction software for shooting noise is therefore also responsible for shooting safety management, because here decisions have to be made on the basis of the same input data.

The development of appropriate complex database structures with the corresponding data maintenance masks and documentation tools is, of course, part of Cervus Consult’s range of services.

Quality assurance

Demands grow with the possibilities. It is almost an art nowadays to be restrained in using the manifold documentation options and especially the cartographic possibilities. Noise maps impress; seem to be reliable bases of important decisions.

But the software must first calculate correctly! After the correct input of correct data, of course. Ensuring this “correctness” is a major challenge.

Quality assurance is therefore also a decisive criterion for software. As a software producer of the federally owned programme WinLarm for shooting noise, we are in the business and are involved in the NALS advisory board special committee Qualitätsanforderungen und Prüfbedingungen schalltechnischer Software für den Immissionsschutz (i.e. Quality Requirements and Test Conditions of Acoustical Software for Immission Control). Dr Hirsch is the chairman of this committee