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Expert Systems
with Applications
Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988
www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

An expert system for predicting the eects of speech interference due

to noise pollution on humans using fuzzy approach
a,* b
Zaheeruddin , V.K. Jain
a
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jamia Nagar, New Delhi 110 025, India
b
School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110 067, India

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop an expert system using fuzzy approach to investigate the eects of noise pollution
on speech interference. The speech interference measured in terms of speech intelligibility is considered to be a function of noise level,
distance between speaker and listener, and the age of the listener. The main source of model development is the reports of World Health
Organization (WHO) and eld surveys conducted by various researchers. It is implemented on Fuzzy Logic Toolbox of MATLAB using
both Mamdani and Sugeno techniques. The results are found to be in good agreement with the ndings of World Health Organization
(WHO) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The study reveals that for good communication at normal distances (short
and medium) encountered in ambient environment, the noise level should not exceed 65 dB(A) for young and middle aged, and
55 dB(A) for old persons.
 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Expert system; Fuzzy logic; Noise pollution; Speech interference; Sentence intelligibility; Social sciences

1. Introduction theorems. It was John Dewey, however, who most inu-

Humanity has dreamed of wisdom-spouting machines
since ancient times. The Greek oracles were supposed to
produce recommendation for action based on wisdom sup-
plied by the gods. Our contemporary counterpart, the com-
puterized expert system, is a near-fullment of this age-old
dream. Though we often think of the expert system as new
technology, its design concepts are as old as human species.
The Babylonians developed an elaborate set of ifthen
rules describing the empirical associations between
observable phenomena in everyday life. Many of these con-
stituted an early attempt to develop a system of medical
diagnosis (Sawyer & Foster, 1986).
The subjectivity of empiricism was a favourite theme of
Descartes, who believed that empirical knowledge might be
deduced with the same degree of certainty as mathematical
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 11 26316151; fax: +91 11 26982651.
E-mail addresses: zaheer_2k@hotmail.com (Zaheeruddin), vkj0400@
mail.jnu.ac.in (V.K. Jain).
enced todays expert system programmers. Dewey saw
logic not as an academic exercise but as a concrete method
of enquiry to be applied to problems. He wrote: The
process of arriving at an idea of what is absent on the basis
of what is at hand is inference. Every inference, just
because it goes beyond the ascertained and known facts,
which are given either by observation or by recollection
of prior knowledge, involves a jump from the known into
unknown. Dewey further stressed the necessity of validat-
ing inference and distinguishing between empirical
causeeect relationships and predictive ones. What is
important, he contended, is that every inference be a
tested inference. In these three statements, he eectively
described the modern rule-based expert system (Sawyer &
Foster, 1986).
As recently as 1980, expert system research was still
conned to a few university research laboratories. Now,
expert systems have found their place in all spheres of life
due to simple representation of knowledge necessary to
solve the problems. An eort has been made in this paper

0957-4174/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2007.08.104
 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988
to develop a fuzzy expert system for predicting the eects of
speech interference by noise pollution on human beings.
The paper is organized in six sections. Section 2 is
devoted to the description of eects of speech interference
by noise pollution on humans. A brief outline of fuzzy
technique is given in Section 3. Methodology and imple-
mentation details are given in Section 4. The results are dis-
cussed in Section 5 followed by conclusions in Section 6.
2. Noise pollution and speech interference
Human inventions and initiatives gradually improved
the productivity of soil, facilitated transportation and com-
munication, and used the natural products of the environ-
ment for better housing, clothing, tools, machines, and
countless aids to cultural development. But the humans
were slow to realize that while their way of life was
improved initially by the applications of human intelli-
gence, the environment was deteriorated simultaneously.
This process of human action and environmental reaction
has been going on for thousands of years. It is only in
recent decades that the full extent and signicance of these
interactions have begun to be realized.
Environment is today multi-dimensionally polluted.
One major pollutant aecting the human race is noise.
The industrial growth and introduction of railroads in
the 19th century accelerated the pervasiveness of environ-
mental noise. In the 20th century, industrial growth even
more dramatically exposed larger and larger segments of
the population to noise, especially from the new mode of
transportation aircraft. In particular, the introduction
of jet aircraft into the civil eet in the late 1950s and early
1960s spurred the scientic and technical community, as
well as the political leadership, to look for solutions to
the growing problem of aircraft noise and environmental
noise in general.
Prominent adverse eects of noise pollution on humans
are: (1) reduction in human work eciency, (2) hearing
loss, (3) annoyance, (4) sleep disruption, and (5) speech
interference. Noise-induced interference with speech com-
munication in urban and industrial environments has
become a subject of concern these days. The primary
method of communication between humans is speech.
Noise pollution has a considerable eect on communica-
tion. Noise interference with speech communication is basi-
cally a masking process in which simultaneous, interfering
noise renders speech incapable of being understood (Bergl-
und & Lindvall, 1995). The masking eect of noise on
speech communication is generally evaluated in terms of
speech intelligibility, which includes words, message, and
sentence intelligibility. Speech intelligibility is an indication
of how well speech is recognized and is dened as the pro-
portion of spoken messages, which are correctly under-
stood (Lazarus, 1990a, 1990b).
The masking process can cause anything from a slight
irritation to a serious safety hazard involving an accident
or even a fatality because of the failure to hear the warning
1979
sounds of imminent danger. For example, noise can disrupt
face-to-face and telephone conversation, and the enjoy-
ment of radio and television in the home (Berglund &
Lindvall, 1995; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), 1981). It can also disrupt eective communication
between teachers and pupils in schools close to airports
(Suter, 1991). Aviation safety (Anon, 1982) in hundreds
of accident investigations reported the use of same words
say again exchanged between pilots and controllers.
Noise may also mask many other acoustical signals impor-
tant for daily life, such as doorbells, telephone signals,
alarm clocks, re alarms and other warning signals, and
music (Edworthy & Adams, 1996).
Many factors contribute to the eects of noise on com-
munication interference. The most important are noise lev-
els, distance between speaker and listener, and age. The
degree of interference of noise with speech depends on
noise level. The higher the level of the masking noise, the
greater will be the percentage of speech sounds that become
incomprehensible to the listener. In quiet indoor surround-
ings (for example in a living room), the speech level at 1 m
distance averages 4550 dB(A) (Berglund & Lindvall,
1995). It has also been reported that for outdoor conditions
at a distance of 1 m from the speaker, relaxed conversation
occurs at a voice level of approximately 5456 dB(A)
(Edworthy & Adams, 1996). A summary of normal voice
levels for outdoor conditions at dierent distances from
the speaker can be found in Berglund and Lindvall
(1995). When the speech level is equal to the surrounding
noise level, intelligibility falls to 95%. Because of the redun-
dancy of speech, 95% intelligibility usually permits reliable
although not necessarily comfortable conversation (Laza-
rus, 1986, 1987). Normal speech communication becomes
impossible at about 75 dB(A) (Berglund & Lindvall, 1995).
Another factor inuencing communication interference
is the age of the people involved (Abel, Krever, & Alberti,
1990; Dubno, Dirks, & Morgan, 1984). Specically,
because children have poorer articulation skills than adults,
their lack of vocabulary or dierent concepts of the rules
of language may render speech unintelligible when some of
the cues in the speech stream are lost (Berglund & Lindvall,
1995). Thus, noisy conditions are more likely to interfere
with the speech of children than with that of adults (Abel
et al., 1990). Additionally, the ability to understand par-
tially masked speech appears to begin deteriorating at
around the age of 30. Thus, the older the listener, the
lower the background noise must be for practical or satis-
factory communication (Lazarus, 1990b). To a lesser
extent, it is also governed by the familiarity of the listener
with the language dialects or accent of the speaker (Bergl-
und & Lindvall, 1995), the hearing ability of persons (Abel
et al., 1990; Dubno et al., 1984), motivation and attention
of the listener (Abel et al., 1990), reverberation characteris-
tics of the room (Nabelek, 1988), culture which governs
how close speakers and listeners can be to each other
(Berglund & Lindvall, 1995), and speech rate (Nejime &
Moore, 1998).
1980 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988
From the above description, it is evident that the major
factors inuencing the speech interference are noise levels,
distance between speakers and listeners, and the age of the
listener. These factors are best represented by linguistic
words because of their inherent fuzzy nature. For example,
a listener can be young, middle aged, or old represent-
ing a range of age intervals. Similarly, distance may be
short, medium, and long representing the separation
between speaker and listener. Likewise, noise levels may
be characterised as low, medium, high, very high, logic, and modal logic, as well as AI-based techniques
and extreme corresponding to various dB(A) intervals.
From the literature surveys, it has been found that the
studies on noise-induced speech interference are eld based
and experimental in nature. The data obtained from the
experimental observations have been statistically analysed
to determine the eect of noise level on speech interference
for dierent inuencing factors such as age and distance
between speaker and listener. Moreover causeeect rela-
tionships of noise-induced speech interference are highly
complex, uncertain, and non-linear in nature. It is quite dif-
cult to properly examine it by conventional methods. In
order to analyse the noise-induced speech interference as
a function of the above three inuencing factors, a novel
approach based on fuzzy set theory has been employed in
the present paper to develop a predictive model. Zadeh
has already pointed out in 1965 in his seminal paper
(Zadeh, 1965) that such imprecisely dened sets or classes
play an important role in human thinking, particularly in
the domains of pattern recognition, communication of
information, and abstraction. The use of fuzzy technique
in noise pollution research is a recent development (Zahee-
ruddin & Jain, 2006, 2004; Zaheeruddin, Jain, & Singh,
2006) and specically in the area of speech interference
(Zaheeruddin & Jain, 2005).
3. Fuzzy expert system
The traditional expert systems have proved to be very
eective and successful in solving well-dened problems,
which are characterised by the precise description of the
system being dealt with in quantitative form. But it is a fact
that most of the worlds knowledge is uncertain and impre-
cise and hence the description of all real systems inherently
contains incomplete and imprecise information. In order to
deal with such situations, a fuzzy approach based on fuzzy
sets (Zadeh, 1965) seems to be the most appropriate.
Knowledge base
Data base
Non-fuzzy Fuzzifier Inference engine
input
Fig. 1. Basic conguration of a fuzzy rule-based system.
Fuzzy set theory is a generalization of traditional set
theory and provides a means for the representation of
imprecision and vagueness. Zadeh (1973, 1975) further
developed the corresponding fuzzy logic to manipulate
the fuzzy sets. During the past two decades, fuzzy logic
has been successfully applied to many real world problems
in various branches of science and engineering.
An important point that should be noted is that classi-
cal logical systems such as propositional logic, predicate
for natural language processing and knowledge represen-
tation, are concerned in a fundamental way with proposi-
tions expressed in a natural language. The main dierence
between such approaches and computing with words
(CW) is that the methodology of CW which is based
on fuzzy logic provides a much more expressive lan-
guage for knowledge representation and much more ver-
satile machinery for reasoning and computation (Zadeh,
1996).
The main paradigm of fuzzy rule-based system is the
fuzzy algorithm (Zadeh, 1968, 1983), the essential concepts
of which are derived from fuzzy logic. It is basically an
expert knowledge-based system that contains the fuzzy
algorithm in a simple rule-base. The knowledge encoded
in the rule-base is derived from human experience and intu-
ition. The rules represent the relationships between the
inputs and outputs of a system. Conceptually, a fuzzy
rule-based system consists of ve functional blocks as
shown in Fig. 1.
a fuzzier which converts real numbers of input into
fuzzy sets. This functional unit essentially transforms
the crisp inputs into a degree of match with linguistic
values. Let X be the universe of discourse and x is a gen-
eric element of X. A fuzzy set A in a universe of dis-
course X is characterised by a membership function
lA(x) which takes values in the interval I = [0, 1]. If
there are m fuzzy sets associated with a given input x,
then fuzzier would produce m fuzzy sets as A1(x),
A2(x), . . ..., Am(x) with m membership functions lAi(x),
i = 1, 2, . . ..., m.
a database (or dictionary) which contains the member-
ship functions of fuzzy sets. The membership functions
provide exibility to the fuzzy sets in modelling com-
monly used linguistic expressions, such as the noise
level is low or the person is young.
Rule base
Defuzzifier Non-fuzzy
output
 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988 1981

a rule base which consists of a set of linguistic statements which can be viewed as a special case of Mamdani fuzzy
of the form, if x is A then y is B, where A and B are inference system, in which each rules consequent is speci-
labels of fuzzy sets on universes of discourse X and Y, ed by a fuzzy singleton. Generally, a single spike is used
respectively. These labels of fuzzy sets are characterised to represent this constant output, also known as a singleton
by appropriate membership function of database. output membership function. Essentially they are a combi-
an inference engine which performs the inference opera- nation of fuzzy and non-fuzzy models. The main advantage
tions on the rules to infer the output by a fuzzy reason- of this approach is its computational eciency.
ing method. Zadeh (1975) proposed the concept of
possibility theory as the theoretical foundation for infer- 4. Methodology and implementation
ence mechanism to deal with the uncertainty and impre-
cision in rule-based systems. The essential rationale The main steps taken in the design of the present fuzzy
behind fuzzy reasoning is the compositional rule of model are explained by the following algorithm:
inference (Zadeh, 1973).
a defuzzier which converts the fuzzy outputs obtained 4.1. Algorithm
by inference engine into a non-fuzzy output real number
domain. 1. Selection of the input and output variables;
2. Determination of the ranges of input and output
The kernel of fuzzy model is the inference engine, which variables;
performs the function of reasoning mechanism (usually 3. Determination of the membership functions for various
called fuzzy reasoning). Fuzzy reasoning (also known as input and output variables;
approximate reasoning) is an inference procedure used to 4. Formation of the set of linguistic rules that represent the
derive conclusions from a set of fuzzy ifthen rules and from relationships between the system variables;
one or more given conditions (Jang & Sun, 1995). The basic 5. Selection of the appropriate reasoning mechanism for
operations of fuzzy reasoning are: (i) to compare the input the formalization of the fuzzy model;
variables with the membership functions on the premise 6. Evaluation of the model adequacy; if the model does not
part to obtain the membership values of each linguistic produce the desired results, modify the rules in step 4.
label, (ii) to combine the membership values on the premise
part to get ring strength of each rule, (iii) to generate the
qualied consequent (either fuzzy or crisp) of each rule Noise Level = X1
Fuzzy
depending on the ring strength, and (iv) to aggregate the Distance = X2 System Speech Interference = Y
qualied consequents to produce a crisp output. Age = X3
Depending on the fuzzy reasoning and fuzzy ifthen
rules employed, the two most popular fuzzy inference sys- Fig. 2. Inputs and output of the system.
tems are Mamdani fuzzy model and Sugeno fuzzy model.
Mamdani fuzzy model (Mamdani & Assilian, 1975) was Table 1
proposed as the very rst attempt to control a steam engine Inputs and output with their associated fuzzy values
and boiler combination by a set of linguistic control rules S. No. Systems Linguistic Linguistic values Fuzzy
obtained from experienced human operators. It is based variables variables intervals
on the collections of ifthen rules with both fuzzy anteced- 1. Inputs Noise level Low 4555 dB(A)
ent and consequent predicates. The advantage of this Medium low 5060 dB(A)
model is that the rule base is generally provided by an Medium 5565 dB(A)
expert and hence to a certain degree it is transparent to Medium high 6070 dB(A)
interpretation and analysis. Because of its simplicity, Mam- High 6575 dB(A)
Very high 7080 dB(A)
dani model is still most widely used technique for solving 2. Distance Short 12.5 m
many real world problems. Sugeno fuzzy model (also Medium 23.5 m
known as TSK fuzzy model) was proposed by Sugeno Long 35 m
and Kang (1988) and Takagi and Sugeno (1985) in an eort 3. Age Young 1040 years
to develop a systematic approach to generate fuzzy rules Middle aged 3060 years
Old 5080 years
from a given inputoutput data. These models are formed
by ifthen rules that have a fuzzy antecedent part and func- 4. Output Sentence Worst 03%
tional consequent. Usually the consequent is a polynomial intelligibility Very poor 115%
Poor 1025%
function of the input variables. When it is a rst-order Acceptable 2040%
polynomial, the resulting fuzzy inference system is called Satisfactory 3060%
a rst-order Sugeno (or TSK) fuzzy model, which was orig- Fair 5080%
inally proposed in Sugeno and Kang (1988) and Takagi Good 7090%
and Sugeno (1985). When consequent is a constant, we Very good 8595%
Excellent 93100%
then have a zero-order Sugeno (or TSK) fuzzy model,
1982 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988

Low MediumLow Medium MediumHigh High VeryHigh

1

0.8

Degree of membership 0.6

0.4

0.2

0
45 50 55 60 65 70 75
Noise Level (dB(A))

Fig. 3a. Membership functions for noise level.

Short Medium Long

1

0.8
Degree of membership

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5
Distance (meters)

Fig. 3b. Membership functions for distance.

Young MiddleAged Old

1

0.8
Degree of membership

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Age (years)

Fig. 3c. Membership functions for age.

 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988 1983

Worst VeryPoor Poor Acceptable Satisfactory Fair Good VeryGood Excellent

1

0.8

Degree of membership
0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Sentence Intelligibility (%)

Fig. 3d. Membership functions for sentence intelligibility.

Fig. 4. Typical rules and their graphic representations in Mamdani approach.

Step 1: Input and output variables ables. The relationships between them will specify
The rst and most important step in modelling is the objective of the model. As shown in Fig. 2,
the identication of systems input and output vari- the input variables are noise level, distance between
1984 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988
Fig. 5. Typical rules and their graphic representations in Sugeno approach.
the speaker and the listener, and the age of the lis-
tener and the output variable is speech interference.
In order to reduce the complexity of the system,
other factors such as place (indoor or outdoor
environment), vocal eorts, dialects, hearing acuity
etc. have been ignored as the inclusion of more
inputs adds to the number of rules manifold.
Step 2: Ranges of the input and output variables
The second step is to determine the ranges of the
input and output variables. These variables in
fuzzy modelling are dened as linguistic variables
whose linguistic values are words or sentences in
a natural or synthetic language. Table 1 shows
the linguistic variables, their linguistic values and
associated fuzzy intervals.
Step 3: Membership functions of the variables
The next step is to express linguistic values in the
form of fuzzy sets, which are represented by its
membership functions. The appropriate choice of
the membership functions for each input and out-
put variable is a crucial step in the proper design
of the fuzzy model because (i) it determines the
complexity of the model, i.e. the number of rules
and (2) the performance of the model, i.e. the accu-
racy of the model results. The membership func-
tions are constructed from several basic functions
such as piecewise linear functions, the Gaussian
distribution function, the sigmoid curve, quadratic
and cubic polynomial curves. The triangular mem-
bership function is the simplest one and is com-
monly used due to its computational eciency.
The membership functions for all inputs and out-
put are shown in Figs. 3a3d.
Step 4: Linguistic rules
The relationships between inputs and output are
represented in the form of IFTHEN rules. The
knowledge base comprises a data base and a rule
base. Membership functions of the fuzzy sets are
contained in the data base. The rule base is a set
of linguistic statements with antecedents and con-
sequents, respectively, connected by AND opera-
tor. In general, a fuzzy rule-based system with
multi-inputs single-output (MISO) can be repre-
sented in the following manner (Yager & Filev,
1994):
IF X1 is B11 AND X2 is B12 AND . . . AND Xr is
B1r THEN Y1 is D1
ALSO
. . ...
ALSO
 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988 1985

IF X1 is Bi1 AND X2 is Bi2 AND . . . AND Xr is Bir

THEN Ys is Ds, Start
where X1, X2,. . ., Xr are the input variables and
Y1, Y2,. . ., Ys are the output variables,
Bij(i = 1,. . ., m, j = 1,. . ., r) and Di (i = 1,. . ., s) MATLAB
are fuzzy subsets of the universes of discourse
U1, U2,. . ., Ur, and V1, V2,. . .., Vs of X1, X2,. . .,
Xr and Y1, Y2,. . ., Ys, respectively. Fuzzy Logic Toolbox
The number of input variables and their associ-
ated membership functions determine the number
of rules. For example, in the present study, there
FIS Editor
are three inputs. The number of membership
functions associated with the rst, second, and
third inputs are six, three, and three, respectively.
This yields a total number of rules (6 3 3) Membership Function Editor
equal to 54.
Step 5: Inference mechanism
The model employs both Mamdani and Assilian
(1975) and Sugeno and Kang (1988) fuzzy infer- Rule Editor
ence methods. In Mamdani inference method,
the membership functions of both the input and
output variables are assumed to be fuzzy sets.
After the aggregation process, there is a fuzzy Fuzzy Inference System
set for each output variable that needs defuzzica-
tion. Sugeno-type inference technique, on the
other hand, assumes the inputs to be fuzzy sets
and the outputs to be constants. Generally, a sin- Surface/Rule Viewer
gle spike is used to represent this constant output,
also known as a singleton output membership
function and it can be thought of as a pre-defuzz-
ied fuzzy set. It enhances the eciency of the
defuzzication process because it greatly simplies No Is the
the computation required to nd the centroid of a result
two-dimensional shape. Rather than integrating desired
across a continuously varying two-dimensional
shape to nd the centroid, we can just nd the Yes
weighted average of a few data points. As an illus-
tration, two rules for each approach along-with
Stop
their graphic representations have been given in
Figs. 4 and 5, respectively.
Step 6: Evaluation of the model adequacy Fig. 6. Flow diagram.
Finally, the model for speech interference expressed
in the form of simple IFTHEN rules was imple-
mented on Fuzzy Logic Toolbox of MATLAB speaker and listener, and the age of the listener as input
(Logic Toolbox for use with MATLAB, 2000). In parameters. The results can be represented either in 3-D
the initial phases, the developed model generally or 2-D plots. For better visualisation and interpretation,
does not produce the desired results. Hence we have the eect of noise level on sentence intelligibility is repre-
to modify the ifthen rules in step 4. In turn, we sented in the form of graphs with distance or age as param-
modify the ranges of the related membership func- eters in Figs. 7a7c.
tions. This process is repeated till the desired results An examination of Fig. 7a shows that the sentence intel-
are obtained. A owchart to implement the fuzzy ligibility remains unaected up to the noise level of
model is shown in Fig. 6. 55 dB(A) if the person is young or middle aged and
the distance between speaker and listener is short. How-
5. Results and discussion ever, it reduces as the noise level increases and approaches
to almost zero (worst) at 75 dB(A). It is evident that the
Speech interference in the present model has been com- reduction in sentence intelligibility is gradual in noise inter-
puted as a function of noise level with distance between val 5565 dB(A) and quite pronounced across all age
1986 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988

100

Sentence Intelligibility (%)

80

60
Young
Middle aged
40 Old

20

0
45 50 55 60 65 70 75
Noise Level (dB(A))

Fig. 7a. Sentence intelligibility a function of noise level for short distance with age as parameter.

100
Sentence Intelligibility (%)

80

60

Young
40 Middle aged
Old

20

0
45 50 55 60 65 70 75
Noise Level (dB(A))

Fig. 7b. Sentence intelligibility a function of noise level for medium distance with age as parameter.

100
Sentence Intelligibility (%)

80

60

Young
40 Middle aged
Old

20

0
45 50 55 60 65 70 75
Noise Level (dB(A))

Fig. 7c. Sentence intelligibility as a function of noise level for long distance with age as parameter.

groups for noise levels exceeding 65 dB(A). It is to be noted low noise level. It is excellent (97%), very good (90%),
that due to presbycusis conditions (Presbycusis refers to the and good (80%) at 60 dB(A) for young, middle aged,
normal hearing loss of the elderly person), the sentence and old persons, respectively. An increase of 5 dB(A)
intelligibility of an old person is never excellent even at (i.e. at 65 dB(A)) changes its values to very good, good,
 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988 1987

Table 2
Sentence intelligibility (%) as a function of noise levels (dB(A)) with distance and age as parameters
S. no. Noise level Sentence intelligibility (%)
(dB(A))
Short distance Medium distance Long distance
Young Middle aged Old Young Middle aged Old Young Middle aged Old
1. 45 97 97 90 97 97 90 97 90 80
2. 50 97 97 90 97 97 90 97 90 80
3. 55 97 97 90 97 97 90 97 90 80
4. 60 97 90 80 97 90 80 90 80 65
5. 65 90 80 65 90 80 65 80 65 45
6. 70 65 45 30 45 30 18 30 18 8
7. 75 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Table 3
A comparison of the results based on the ndings of surveys and the fuzzy model for healthy young persons
S. Noise levels Sentence intelligibility
no. (dB(A))
For short distance For medium distance
a
Findings of US EPA Model results Findings of US EPAb Model results
(%) (%)
Numerical value Fuzzy Numerical value Fuzzy
(%) value (%) value
1. 45 100 97 Excellent 100 97 Excellent
2. 50 100 97 Excellent 100 97 Excellent
3. 55 99 97 Excellent 98 97 Excellent
4. 60 98 97 Excellent 97 97 Excellent
5. 65 92 90 Very good 91 90 Very good
6. 70 65 65 Fair 47 45 Satisfactory
7. 75 0 1 Worst 0 1 Worst
a
Source: Berglund and Lindvall (1995).
b
Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (1981).

and fair (65%) for these categories of persons, respec-
tively. A further increase of 5 dB(A) (i.e. at 70 dB(A))
reduces its values sharply to fair, satisfactory (45%),
and acceptable (30%), respectively.
Fig. 7b shows the behaviour of sentence intelligibility for
all age groups at medium distance and remains same as in
case of short distance with noise level up to 65 dB(A). At
70 dB(A), it is satisfactory for young, acceptable for
middle aged, and poor (18%) for old persons.
In contrast, for long distance, appreciable deteriora-
tion in sentence intelligibility is observed for middle aged
and old persons even at 65 dB(A) and for all age groups
including the young at 70 dB(A) as shown in Fig. 7c.
For example, at 70 dB(A), sentence intelligibility is 30%,
18%, and 8% for young, middle aged and old persons,
respectively.
A summary of model results is given in Table 2. In order
to validate our present model, a comparison has been made
in Table 3 between the model predictions and the ndings
from eld surveys carried out in dierent parts of the world
(Berglund & Lindvall, 1995; Lazarus, 1987). Table 3 shows
the percentage of sentence intelligibility as a function of
noise levels for short and medium distances. A compar-
ison of model results for short distance has been made
with the survey ndings specic to a typical living room
(Berglund & Lindvall, 1995), as it is reasonable to expect
the distance between the speaker and listener to be in the
fuzzy interval 12.5 m. However, for medium distance (2
3.5 m), the model results have been compared with the nd-
ings of outdoor surveys (Lazarus, 1987). It may be pointed
out the outdoor survey results are for distances greater
than 2 m. An examination of Table 3 clearly conrms the
adequacy of the model in predicting the percentage of sen-
tence intelligibility at dierent noise levels for short and
medium distances for young persons.
6. Conclusions
The present fuzzy model has been developed to investi-
gate the eects of noise pollution on speech interference.
The speech interference measured in terms of sentence
intelligibility has been modelled as a function of noise lev-
els, distance between the speaker and the listener, and the
age of the person concerned. The model has been imple-
mented on Fuzzy Logic Toolbox of MATLAB. The results
obtained from the proposed model are in good agreement
with the ndings of eld surveys conducted in dierent
parts of the world. It is born out from the present study
that for good communication at normal distances (short
and medium) encountered in ambient environment, the
noise level should not exceed 65 dB(A) for young and
middle aged persons, and 55 dB(A) for old persons.
The present eort also establishes the usefulness of the
fuzzy technique in studying the environmental problems
1988 Zaheeruddin, V.K. Jain / Expert Systems with Applications 35 (2008) 19781988
where the causeeect relationships are inherently fuzzy in
nature.
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