A Spatial Data Infrastructure for Environmental Noise Data in Europe

Abstract

Access to high quality data is essential in order to better understand the environmental and health impact of noise in an increasingly urbanised world. This paper analyses how recent developments of spatial data infrastructures in Europe can significantly improve the utilization of data and streamline reporting on a pan-European scale. The Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community (INSPIRE), and Environmental Noise Directive (END) described in this manuscript provide principles for data management that, once applied, would lead to a better understanding of the state of environmental noise. Furthermore, shared, harmonised and easily discoverable environmental spatial data, required by the INSPIRE, would also support the data collection needed for the assessment and development of strategic noise maps. Action plans designed by the EU Member States to reduce noise and mitigate related effects can be shared to the public through already established nodes of the European spatial data infrastructure. Finally, data flows regarding reporting on the state of environment and END implementation to the European level can benefit by applying a decentralised e-reporting service oriented infrastructure. This would allow reported data to be maintained, frequently updated and enable pooling of information from/to other relevant and interrelated domains such as air quality, transportation, human health, population, marine environment or biodiversity. We describe those processes and provide a use case in which noise data from two neighbouring European countries are mapped to common data specifications, defined by INSPIRE, thus ensuring interoperability and harmonisation.

Power Transformer Spatial Acoustic Radiation Characteristics Analysis under Multiple Operating Conditions

“…Due to the power transformer noise may affect residents around in both physiological and psychological ways, interfering with basic activities such as sleep, rest, work, study, and communication [1,2], the noise emission levels are facing more stringent environmental noise standards [3]. Based on this, the theoretical method and practical measures about assessing power transformer noise levels and reducing the influence of noise has aroused general concern, which is especially noticed by the transformer manufacturers [4] and the operators of power grids [5].…”

Comparison of mathematical methods and measurements of traffic noise indices in pedestrian routes

“…CRTN and NMPB models were found to be reliable for other authors (SHENG; XU; LI, 2015; MURPHY; DOUGLAS, 2018) and to allow the generation of complementary data. However, there are still many issues related to the development of noise maps, even for the European countries that already adopted them as a strategy for noise control (ABRAMIC et al, 2017).…”

“…At this point, a smart city technology could be helpful to provide data for common users. Furthermore, approaching the problem from the users' viewpoints could be a relatively promising strategy, though also requiring improvements on the current approaches already applied by developed countries (ABRAMIC et al, 2017).…”

The Public Health Impact of Road-Traffic Noise in a Highly-Populated City, Republic of Korea: Annoyance and Sleep Disturbance

“…In general, noise mapping is performed with a sound propagation model that requires a variety of data, such as building, topography, road network, traffic volume, vehicle types and speed [2,53,54]. Table 1 summarizes input data that were utilized in generating the road traffic noise maps of the study area.…”