Advancement in the development of European common noise assessment methods: where are we?

In the context of the European Environmental Noise Directive (2002/49/EC)1, to improve the quality and reliability of the overall noise assessment results, the European Commission intends to prepare common noise assessment method for road traffic, railway traffic, aircraft and industrial noise, including guidelines on method implementation and input data, aimed at obtaining comparable results across the EU Member States. A roadmap for preparing the common noise assessment methods was established by DG ENV of the European Commission. This includes the identification and evaluation of existing methods on the basis of the following criteria: (a) ability to consider differences in noise source amongst EU regions (specific features which vary due to environmental factors like road and railway surface maintenance, specific regulations in force, techniques used to prevent noise, road & railway networks and aircrafts fleets); (b) ability to consider meteorological effects; easiness of implementation; (c) availability free of intellectual property rights; (d) integration of scientific evidence; (e) availability and quality of input data; (f) fulfilment of the requirements of the END. In the period December 2008 to August 2009, DG JRC in co-operation with the European Environment Agency elaborated requirements on the input values and their associated quality in view of the next round of European noise mapping and identified and scrutinised the noise assessment methods that best cover the needs and requirements of the END with regard to strategic noise mapping. These preselected methods were proposed to DG ENV for further consideration for establishing the common noise assessment methods in EU. In a second step, those parts of the selected methods that fulfil at best the criteria of the evaluation will be used to produce a ¿fit for purpose¿ framework for common European noise assessment method(s).

KEPHALOPOULOS Stylianos;  PAVIOTTI Marco; 

2010-03-22

Institute of Acoustics

JRC57492

http://www.euronoise2009.org.uk/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC57492,