COMPILE—A Generic Benchmark Case for Predictions of Marine Pile-Driving Noise

The prediction of underwater noise emissions from impact pile driving during near-shore and offshore construction activities and its potential effect on the marine environment has been a major field of research for several years. A number of different modeling approaches have been suggested recently to predict the radiated sound pressure at different distances and depths from a driven pile. As there are no closed-form analytical solutions for this complex class of problems and for a lack of publicly available measurement data, the need for a benchmark case arises to compare the different approaches. Such a benchmark case was set up by the Institute of Modelling and Computation, Hamburg University of Technology (Hamburg, Germany) and the Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO, The Hague, The Netherlands). Research groups from all over the world, who are involved in modeling sound emissions from offshore pile driving, were invited to contribute to the first so-called COMPILE (a portmanteau combining computation, comparison, and pile) workshop in Hamburg in June 2014. In this paper, the benchmark case is presented, alongside an overview of the seven models and the associated results contributed by the research groups from six different countries. The modeling results from the workshop are discussed, exhibiting a remarkable consistency in the provided levels out to several tens of kilometers. Additionally, possible future benchmark case extensions are proposed.