Experimental assessment of underwater radiated sound of different ship types

The aim of the SONIC project is to develop tools to investigate and mitigate the effects of underwater noise generated by shipping. One way to study the contribution of shipping noise to the background noise in the seas is to produce shipping noise maps. The SONIC project delivers the required technical knowledge for noise mapping, based on a source definition of shipping traffic composed of various ship types. The development of reliable source level models requires the availability of radiated noise data of ships. Therefore, full scale radiated noise measurements were performed near a shipping lane in coastal waters out of the Port of Rotterdam. The results of the noise measurements are combined with information about the measured ships and their positions, derived from registered AIS data, to derive source levels. The experiments provide data to populate the SONIC radiated noise database, which can be used for source level model development and validation.