[mmahemoff]

I'd love a "sound overlay" for regular maps such as GMaps. If people knew typical noise levels across the day and across the year, it would change everything about travel bookings and real estate searches. For something that has such a huge impact on wellbeing, it's incredible how little attention it gets, from governments to individuals.

[cheschire]

This is pretty close to what you're looking for, assuming you're in the US.

https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/

Also for those interested in the data side: https://data-usdot.opendata.arcgis.com/

[w-ll]

I find it interesting but not surprising how you can pretty much plot air ports and the in/out routes from this heat map.

Also interesting things like Whiteman AFB, from the recent stealth bomber post, shows nothing.

[Anechoic]

Also interesting things like Whiteman AFB, from the recent stealth bomber post, shows nothing

Those maps are generated by publicly available data (traffic, railway schedules, etc). In the case of airports/airbases, the data are generated with radar flight tracks. Military flight track data are often redacted (presumably because they can leak aircraft performance data) so it's not surprising that modeled noise from stealth aircraft was not calculated.

[kzrdude]

The default view doesn't show rail traffic, which also seems to add a lot of heat to the map. I haven't quite understood what the map is based on, but it says 24-hr LAeq - is this a 24-hour average or 24-hour max?

[Anechoic]

LAeq is an “energy” average, it’s all of the sound energy from the sources that’s averaged over 24 hours. It reflects human response to noise since.

[hattmall]

Google could totally do this too, just sample a few times a day the decibel level on every android and cross it with location data.