The sustainability of anthropogenic activities at\ud
sea is recently gaining more and more attention. As regards\ud
shipping, emissions from ships into the environment\ud
of various nature (engine exhaust gases, anti-fouling\ud
paints leaching, ballast exchange, releases at sea of oil\ud
and other noxious liquid or solid cargoes, of sewage and\ud
of garbage) have been recognized as sources of pollution\ud
and therefore controlled and limited since a long time.\ud
The subject of noise emission has been identified only recently.\ud
To study the problem, the EU has funded, among\ud
others, the FP7 SILENV (Ship Innovative soLutions to rEduce\ud
Noise and Vibrations) project that run from 2010 to\ud
2012. In the present work, the holistic approach followed\ud
within the project to characterize and control the ship as\ud
a source of noise is presented. Three types of noise emissions\ud
(in air, in water and inside the ship) are analyzed\ud
highlighting peculiarities and different strategies adopted\ud
to characterize the source, the impact on the receiver and\ud
the possible solutions to set limits to the ship emissions.\ud
The project outcome included a socalled “Green Label”: a\ud
set of new prenormative requirements defined for the three\ud
main areas mentioned above
There is increasing concern within the scientific community about the underwater noise due to anthropogenic activity and its impact on marine life, with negative consequences on biodiversity and sea resources. In that context, the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive stated in 2008 that the anthropogenic noise due to shipping was to be mitigated. To address this issue, the European Union (EU) project “Achieve QUieter Oceans by shipping noise footprint reduction” (AQUO) (www.aquo.eu) started in October 2012 with a duration of four years. The project brought together experts from shipbuilding, underwater acoustics, and bioacoustics, with a multidisciplinary approach. In this paper, after giving a brief overview of the project structure, the methodology proposed by the AQUO project to set guidelines for controlling the underwater noise from commercial shipping is presented in more detail. Such a methodology is aimed at identifying the most promising strategies for the mitigation of the impact of shipping noise on marine fauna. Different technical as well as operational solutions are evaluated by taking into account the impact on marine life, the feasibility in terms of ship design, and the cost effectiveness, also considering fuel efficiency. While technical solutions are usually more effective at the design stage both in terms of costs and performance, operational solutions can potentially be adopted without any modification to the existing fleet. Furthermore, operational prescriptions can be set by national/local authorities who cannot directly intervene on ship configurations. The different solutions have been evaluated by means of numerical modeling carried out by using a Noise Footprint Assessment Model derived from the Quonops too
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