scholarly journals Strategic directions in implementation of environmental noise directive in international and national legislation

2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Cvetkovic ◽  
M. Prascevic
Keyword(s):  
Road Traffic ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Green Paper ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Emission ◽  
Noise Sources ◽  
Noise Mapping ◽  
The Public

Until 1996, the noise policy in Europe had concentrated on the regulations of noise emission from noise sources as road traffic, aircraft and equipment used outdoors. Although noise limits have become increasingly stringent over the years, no corresponding significant reduction in noise emission has been observed. In response to this, the European noise policy has been revised to focus on noise reception. Thus, the Green Paper from 1996 defines as the basic aim of future noise policy that "no person should be exposed to noise levels which endanger health and quality of life". The structure of a new future noise policy has to be based on the Directive on the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise, 2002/43/EC. The Directive defines the three key elements: assessment of environmental noise through strategic noise mapping, implementation of action plans to reduce noise where necessary and information for the public about noise levels and its effects. The Directive defines the common noise indicators and methods for strategic noise mapping as well as the deadline for the Directive implementation. The Directive implementation at national and local level means enacting the new acts or amending existing acts. In this paper, the proposal of steps that can be taken for harmonization of national acts with the basic principles and elements of the Directive is presented and discussed.

scholarly journals MODELLING URBAN NOISE IN CITYGML ADE: CASE OF THE NETHERLANDS

2017 ◽  
Vol IV-4/W5 ◽  
pp. 73-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Kumar ◽  
H. Ledoux ◽  
T. J. F. Commandeur ◽  
J. E. Stoter
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Input Data ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Motor Vehicles ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Mapping ◽  
Urban Noise

Road traffic and industrial noise has become a major source of discomfort and annoyance among the residents in urban areas. More than 44 % of the EU population is regularly exposed to road traffic noise levels over 55 dB, which is currently the maximum accepted value prescribed by the Environmental Noise Directive for road traffic noise. With continuously increasing population and number of motor vehicles and industries, it is very unlikely to hope for noise levels to diminish in the near future. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor urban noise, so as to make mitigation plans and to deal with its adverse effects. The 2002/49/EC Environmental Noise Directive aims to determine the exposure of an individual to environmental noise through noise mapping. One of the most important steps in noise mapping is the creation of input data for simulation. At present, it is done semi-automatically (and sometimes even manually) by different companies in different ways and is very time consuming and can lead to errors in the data. In this paper, we present our approach for automatically creating input data for noise simulations. Secondly, we focus on using 3D city models for presenting the results of simulation for the noise arising from road traffic and industrial activities in urban areas. We implemented a few noise modelling standards for industrial and road traffic noise in CityGML by extending the existing Noise ADE with new objects and attributes. This research is a steping stone in the direction of standardising the input and output data for noise studies and for reconstructing the 3D data accordingly.

scholarly journals The “sound of silence” in Granada during the COVID-19 lockdown

Noise Mapping ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerónimo Vida Manzano ◽  
José Antonio Almagro Pastor ◽  
Rafael García Quesada ◽  
Francesco Aletta ◽  
Tin Oberman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Sources ◽  
Comparison Results ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Abstract Exceptional circumstances in the city of Granada due to the COVID-19 lockdown have provided the opportunity to characterise the impact of humans on its urban acoustic climate. Traditional environmental noise management and urban sound planning usually take into account noise sources in the city, such as industrial activities or road traffic noise, in model estimations, as well as in empirical research. But trying to isolate human impact by itself, human activity including social activity, walking, talking or just going around the city, has always been a difficult or even impossible task. The COVID-19 lockdown measures have provided the opportunity to study urban climate as never before, affected just by natural or animal noise sources. Previous soundscape research at some iconic sites in the city of Granada carried out in 2019 before the lockdown and a special measuring campaign carried out at the same locations during the lockdown in 2020 offered valuable information on sound levels and local characteristics in order to carry out this comparison. Results show a great change in environmental noise levels that is interesting not only because of its magnitude, but also for its implications, especially at those sites where social human activity was an identifying characteristic. Natural or animal sounds became surprisingly evident at some study sites, especially where road traffic noise dramatically decreased, leading to significantly lower background noise levels. Important spectral changes are observed before and during the lockdown, suggesting a shift from anthropic to animal sources in the acoustic environment.

scholarly journals Aggregate Impact of Anomalous Noise Events on the WASN-Based Computation of Road Traffic Noise Levels in Urban and Suburban Environments

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesc Alías ◽  
Ferran Orga ◽  
Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès ◽  
Joan Claudi Socoró
Keyword(s):  
Sensor Networks ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Integration Time ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Mapping ◽  
Acoustic Data

Environmental noise can be defined as the accumulation of noise pollution caused by sounds generated by outdoor human activities, Road Traffic Noise (RTN) being the main source in urban and suburban areas. To address the negative effects of environmental noise on public health, the European Environmental Noise Directive requires EU member states to tailor noise maps and define the corresponding action plans every five years for major agglomerations and key infrastructures. Noise maps have been hitherto created from expert-based measurements, after cleaning the recorded acoustic data of undesired acoustic events, or Anomalous Noise Events (ANEs). In recent years, Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) have become an alternative. However, most of the proposals focus on measuring global noise levels without taking into account the presence of ANEs. The LIFE DYNAMAP project has developed a WASN-based dynamic noise mapping system to analyze the acoustic impact of road infrastructures in real time based solely on RTN levels. After studying the bias caused by individual ANEs on the computation of the A-weighted equivalent noise levels through an expert-based dataset obtained before installing the sensor networks, this work evaluates the aggregate impact of the ANEs on the RTN measurements in a real-operation environment. To that effect, 304 h and 20 min of labeled acoustic data collected through the two WASNs deployed in both pilot areas have been analyzed, computing the individual and aggregate impacts of ANEs for each sensor location and impact range (low, medium and high) for a 5 min integration time. The study shows the regular occurrence of ANEs when monitoring RTN levels in both acoustic environments, which are especially common in the urban area. Moreover, the results reveal that the aggregate contribution of low- and medium-impact ANEs can become as critical as the presence of high-impact individual ANEs, thus highlighting the importance of their automatic removal to obtain reliable WASN-based RTN maps in real-operation environments.

scholarly journals Sleep Disturbance from Road Traffic, Railways, Airplanes and from Total Environmental Noise Levels in Montreal

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane Perron ◽  
Céline Plante ◽  
Martina Ragettli ◽  
David Kaiser ◽  
Sophie Goudreau ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sleep Disturbance ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Noise Levels

Perceptions towards the quality of public services in Romania. Poor outcomes of public administration reforms?

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-285
Author(s):  
Claudia Petrescu ◽  
Flavis Mihalache
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Public Services ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Administration Reform

Public services represent an important dimension of quality of society, as they create the contextual conditions for people to further their quality of life. Romanian public administration reform has brought about a constant institutional transformation, which has influenced both the specific features and the quality of the services. This article aims to analyse trends regarding the perceived quality of public services in Romania, in European comparative perspective, using the data of the European Quality of Life Survey (2003–2016). The article aims to understand the low satisfaction with public services in Romania against the background of the public service reform measures taken by government in this period. The article describes the context of Romanian public administration and public service reform, the most important public policy measures adopted and the most important challenges. The lack of vision in the public service reform, the partial introduction of reform elements, the permanent and, sometimes, conflicting changes are issues that may have influenced the way in which the population perceives the quality of public services. The decentralisation process of public services and the insufficient allocation of public funds for delivering such services at local level might have an impact on their quality and quantity perceived by the population. Keywords: public services; public administration reform; citizens’ satisfaction; New Public Management; New Weberianism.

scholarly journals Soundscape approach integrating noise mapping techniques: a case study in Brighton, UK

Noise Mapping ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Aletta ◽  
Jian Kang
Keyword(s):  
Road Traffic ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Sound Level ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
Noise Mapping ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Sound Environment ◽  
Sound Maps

AbstractIn the guidelines about the management of areas of good environmental noise quality recently published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) it is suggested to combine different methodologies, like noise mapping, sound level measurements and the soundscape approach. Such a recommendation has started to be recognised by a number of local authorities in Europe that are gradually integrating a holistic concept into their environmental noise policies. This research aimed to explore and demonstrate the possibility to integrate conventional noise mapping methods and soundscape methods in an actual urban redevelopment project. A case study was made using the Valley Gardens project in Brighton & Hove (UK). Different scenarios of sound-pressure level distributionswere simulated for both traffic sound sources (i.e. noise maps) and natural sound sources (i.e. sound maps). Additionally, individual responses about the sound environment of the place collected during an on-site question survey were used to implement soundscape maps.The overall picture revealed that the road traffic noise should be reduced, but also it is feasible that preferred sounds likewater features or birdsong could be introduced to make the sound environment more appropriate for the place. Generally, within the framework of this research, noise maps, sound maps and soundscape maps were used together to "triangulate" different layers of information related to the acoustic environment and the way it is perceived, providing a possible working procedure to consider for planners and policy-makers in the future.

scholarly journals Acoustic Energy Harvesting in Nigeria: Prospects, Technical Problems and Socio-Economic Obstacles

2020 ◽  
pp. 16-33
Author(s):  
Michael U. Onuu
Keyword(s):  
Energy Harvesting ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Acoustic Energy ◽  
Road Traffic Noise ◽  
Noise Power ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Sources ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Acoustic Energy Harvesting

Aims: To investigate the prospects or potentials of acoustic energy harvesting in Nigeria as well as highlight technical problems and socio-economic obstacles. Study Design: The study re-examined existing data, noise levels and noise power, from road traffic, aircraft, industrial/occupational, outdoor and indoor noise sources. Noise levels and noise power obtained from recent measurements of such noise sources were also examined and analyzed. The data were compared with values from noise sources used for electricity in other countries of the world. Technical problems and socio-economic obstacles have been highlighted. Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The duration was one year: April, 2019 and April, 2020. Methodology: Wide range noise level measurements, analysis and re-examination of existing data on road traffic, aircraft, industrial/occupational, outdoor and indoor noise were conducted, in line with the objectives of the study, in cities, industries as well as homes with different noise features. Measurements were carried out using sound level meter, SLM, (Bruel and Kjaer 2203) with  – octave band filter and SLM, EXTECH 407750 with RS232, sound level recorder (B & K 7005), and noise level (statistical) analyzer (B & K 2121) to obtain noise levels and indices. Also, noise power was subsequently obtained for each of the various noise levels and indices. Results: Maximum noise levels, Lmax.; noise power, Wmax.; octave band pressure levels, BPLs; and other indices for the different noise sources were determined. Lmax. and Wmax for aircraft were as high as 116 dB and 0.4 W, respectively, while those for industry and road traffic ranged from 104.0 dB-131.0 dB and 67.5 dB-85.6 dB corresponding to 0.025 W-12.59 W and 0.0000056 W-0.00036 W, respectively. Spectral power of road traffic noise varied between 5.17 x 10-5 W and 9.69 x 10-3 W. Outdoor and household noise sources had Lmax. of up to 48.5 dB and 88.0 dB, that is, 0.000000071 W and 0.00063 W, for quiet and noisy periods, respectively. It was observed that road traffic noise has the highest potential for acoustic energy harvesting in Nigeria being reasonably steady over time, especially, on intra-city roads. Availability of tricycles/motorcycles in abundance and frequent use of horn by motorists support this assertion. The noise levels and noise power from these sources obtained in this investigation are higher than those that have been used as input to acoustic energy harvesters (AEHs) such as piezoelectric based and triboelectric nanogenerators (TRENGs) to achieve known efficiencies as reported elsewhere. Conclusion: The noise power is such that it could be used in powering microelectronic components, devices and in lighting light emitting diodes (LEDs). Power supply (PS) audio noise harvesters (ANHs) have been identified as potential noise energy sources since there is wide range use of air-conditioned by the political class, elites and government agencies in Nigeria where maximum temperature of 47.2°C is attainable. These findings show the viability of AEH in Nigeria and their addition to the existing body of knowledge in the emerging area of AEH will open a new window of research in AEH in this part of the world. Other prospects of AEH in Nigeria, technical problems and socio-economic obstacles are highlighted.

scholarly journals Escalation of tuberculosis notification: an analysis of associated social factors

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (33) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Muhammad Miandad ◽  
Syed Nawaz-ul-Huda ◽  
Farkhunda Burke ◽  
Muhammad Azam ◽  
Imran Khan
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Social Factor ◽  
Analysis Data ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Core Requirements ◽  
Population Ratio

Abstract Studies have revealed that socioeconomic factors such as those pertaining to unmarried respondents, dependency, housing congestion and room sharing are associated with tuberculosis rates not only in developing countries but also in developed countries. Karachi has been identified as one of the most vulnerable cities where the spread of TB is increasing with the passage of time. The purpose of the present study is to assess TB notification with reference to some social factors in order that the findings of this study may provide helpful information for guidance related to social and economic policy formulation, at least at the local level to combat and eliminate tuberculosis. The methodology was based on NTP registered patients’ data and social factor analysis data which were acquired through questionnaire survey from notified patients. The result pertaining to TB notification reveals an increasing trend during the last seven years from 2007 until 2013. The notification of female patients compared to that of males is high, which is evidence of the fact that women in Pakistan are more affected but a comparison of patients to the total population in the respective years i.e. the patient population ratio, reveals a decreasing trend. The findings of the study emphasize that the problem of TB control can be resolved expeditiously with the cooperation of the public sector, which should be motivated to meet the core requirements of the programme at various administrative levels and strongly enforced standards of quality of life.

scholarly journals Low noise levels of BEV electric cars - an advantage or disadvantage?

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 221-224
Author(s):  
Ewelina Sendek-Matysiak
Keyword(s):  
Co2 Emissions ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Development Trend ◽  
Low Noise ◽  
Electric Motors ◽  
Noise Levels ◽  
Noise Emission ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Electric Cars ◽  
Automotive Market

Everything indicates that the future of the automotive market is related to the use of electric motors. It is related to, among others with the introduction of increasing restrictions on CO2 emissions and noise. In addition, the fuel market itself (mining and processing) has major limitations not only ecological, but above all economical and political. Supplying cars exclusively from batteries is currently a strong development trend propagated almost by all major manufacturers. One of the researched aspects of vehicles introduced to the market is the issue of noise emission, whose emission has both positive and negative effects on road traffic.

scholarly journals NoiseModelling: An Open Source GIS Based Tool to Produce Environmental Noise Maps

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erwan Bocher ◽  
Gwenaël Guillaume ◽  
Judicaël Picaut ◽  
Gwendall Petit ◽  
Nicolas Fortin
Keyword(s):  
Open Source ◽  
Input Data ◽  
Noise Exposure ◽  
Road Traffic ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
Environmental Noise ◽  
Noise Model ◽  
Population Exposure ◽  
Noise Mapping ◽  
The Impact

The urbanisation phenomenon and related cities expansion and transport networks entail preventing the increase of population exposed to environmental pollution. Regarding noise exposure, the Environmental Noise Directive demands on main metropolis to produce noise maps. While based on standard methods, these latter are usually generated by proprietary software and require numerous input data concerning, for example, the buildings, land use, transportation network and traffic. The present work describes an open source implementation of a noise mapping tool fully implemented in a Geographic Information System compliant with the Open Geospatial Consortium standards. This integration makes easier at once the formatting and harvesting of noise model input data, cartographic rendering and output data linkage with population data. An application is given for a French city, which consists in estimating the impact of road traffic-related scenarios in terms of population exposure to noise levels both in relation to a threshold value and level classes.

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