Modeling of ships as a source of underwater noise

Conference poster, 2017

Shipping as a source of underwater noise is increasing. Underwater noise emission levels are seldom considered as a ship design parameter unless low vessel noise is specifically required, like in the case of warships and research vessels. Noise emissions are not regulated yet, but the awareness of possible impacts of noise on marine life is increasing. This paper describes the implementation of a noise source model for the Ship Traffic Emission Abatement Model (STEAM; Jalkanen et al. 2009; 2012; Johansson et al, 2017). The combination of vessel technical description and activity can be used to generate noise source maps which are based on actual ship traffic data. The generated noise source maps can ve used to describe the energy emitted as noise to the water, which facilitates regular annual updates of the noise emissions from ship traffic in the Baltic Sea area.