This Special Issue was launched to promote a subject that is deserving of more attention: the study of new metrics, indicators or evaluation methods for noise exposure, and the relationship of noise ...with annoyance or other health effects, thus not relying only on an average noise exposure measure. This Special Issue on the theme of the New Indicators for the Assessment and Prevention of Noise Nuisance has attracted the interest of authors from all over the world, with the publication of two reviews and two communications, as well as original research papers. Progress has been made in the investigated topic; however, it is still necessary to increase the awareness of the population, both in geographical terms and for workers in specific sectors, such as the marine industry. It emerged that it is essential to carry out future studies that distinguish better between different sound sources with respect to their sound quality in terms of frequency, time pattern (fluctuation, emergence), and psychoacoustic indices, because a differential human reaction to sound sources is increasingly evident. More longitudinal studies are required. However, cross-sectional studies employing a more detailed soundscape description (including background) by competing sound indices are also useful to further the required knowledge to understand the human response in terms of the broad spectrum of potential adverse effects on health and quality of life.
Urban noise pollution is an omnipresent but often neglected threat to public health that must be addressed urgently. Passive noise control measures, which are less effective at reducing low-frequency ...noise and are often bulky and may impede airflow. As evidenced in automobiles, active control of cabin noise has resulted in lighter cars due to reduced passive insulation. Despite its long history and recent popularisation by consumer headphones, the implementation of active noise control in the built environment is still rare. To date, active noise control (ANC) has been demonstrated, at source, in construction machines and, in the transmission path, in noise barriers. Recent demand for naturally-ventilated buildings has also spurred the development of active control solutions at the receiving end, such as on windows. The ten questions aim to demystify the principles of ANC and highlight areas in which environmental noise can be actively mitigated. Since the implementation of active control in the built environment usually involves multiple stakeholders, operational concerns are addressed. To conclude, research gaps are identified that would enable increased adoption of ANC in the built environment. There is also renewed interest in applying intelligent ANC to tackle environmentally complex applications, such as varying noise levels in the earcup of ANC headphones, particularly with the advent of the low-cost, low-power, highly-efficient embedded electronics; advancing speaker technology; and new impetus from digital signal processing and artificial intelligence Algorithms.
•How can we implement active noise control in the built environment?•How to implement active noise control on noise barriers?•How feasible is active noise control for façade elements?•Is it possible to actively control noise in a large open space?•Is there a synergy between active noise control and the soundscape approach?
Noise is one of the most diffused environmental stressors affecting modern life. As such, the scientific community is committed to studying the main emission and transmission mechanisms aiming at ...reducing citizens’ exposure, but is also actively studying the effects that noise has on health. However, scientific literature lacks data on multiple sources of noise and cardiovascular outcomes. The present cross-sectional study aims to evaluate the impact that different types of noise source (road, railway, airport and recreational) in an urban context have on blood pressure variations and hypertension. 517 citizens of Pisa, Italy, were subjected to a structured questionnaire and five measures of blood pressure in one day. Participants were living in the same building for at least 5 years, were aged from 37 to 72 years old and were exposed to one or more noise sources among air traffic, road traffic, railway and recreational noise. Logistic and multivariate linear regression models have been applied in order to assess the association between exposures and health outcomes. The analyses showed that prevalence of high levels of diastolic blood pressure (DBP) is consistent with an increase of 5 dB (A) of night-time noise (β = 0.50 95% CI: 0.18–0.81). Furthermore, increased DBP is also positively associated with more noise sensitive subjects, older than 65 years old, without domestic noise protection, or who never close windows. Among the various noise sources, railway noise was found to be the most associated with DBP (β = 0.68; 95% CI: −1.36, 2.72). The obtained relation between DBP and night-time noise levels reinforces current knowledge.
To evaluate the quality of available evidence on the effects of environmental noise exposure on sleep a systematic review was conducted. The databases PSYCINFO, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of ...Science and the TNO Repository were searched for non-laboratory studies on the effects of environmental noise on sleep with measured or predicted noise levels and published in or after the year 2000. The quality of the evidence was assessed using GRADE criteria. Seventy four studies predominately conducted between 2000 and 2015 were included in the review. A meta-analysis of surveys linking road, rail, and aircraft noise exposure to self-reports of sleep disturbance was conducted. The odds ratio for the percent highly sleep disturbed for a 10 dB increase in L
was significant for aircraft (1.94; 95% CI 1.61-2.3), road (2.13; 95% CI 1.82-2.48), and rail (3.06; 95% CI 2.38-3.93) noise when the question referred to noise, but non-significant for aircraft (1.17; 95% CI 0.54-2.53), road (1.09; 95% CI 0.94-1.27), and rail (1.27; 95% CI 0.89-1.81) noise when the question did not refer to noise. A pooled analysis of polysomnographic studies on the acute effects of transportation noise on sleep was also conducted and the unadjusted odds ratio for the probability of awakening for a 10 dBA increase in the indoor L
was significant for aircraft (1.35; 95% CI 1.22-1.50), road (1.36; 95% CI 1.19-1.55), and rail (1.35; 95% CI 1.21-1.52) noise. Due to a limited number of studies and the use of different outcome measures, a narrative review only was conducted for motility, cardiac and blood pressure outcomes, and for children's sleep. The effect of wind turbine and hospital noise on sleep was also assessed. Based on the available evidence, transportation noise affects objectively measured sleep physiology and subjectively assessed sleep disturbance in adults. For other outcome measures and noise sources the examined evidence was conflicting or only emerging. According to GRADE criteria, the quality of the evidence was moderate for cortical awakenings and self-reported sleep disturbance (for questions that referred to noise) induced by traffic noise, low for motility measures of traffic noise induced sleep disturbance, and very low for all other noise sources and investigated sleep outcomes.
Distributed fiber-optical acoustic sensing (DAS) is a new and booming technology in seismic exploration. DAS technology has been gradually applied to the exploration of vertical seismic profile (VSP) ...due to its strong resistance to high temperature and pressure, high sensitivity, high precision (trace interval can be accurate to about 1 m), and so on. However, real DAS-VSP data are always contaminated by both random and coherent noises, which greatly affects the quality of DAS-VSP data. In order to suppress the background noise and increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), a convolutional neural network (CNN) based on leaky rectifier linear unit (ReLU) and forward modeling is proposed and named L-FM-CNN. In terms of network architecture, Leaky ReLU is adopted as the activation function of CNN, which can enhance the recovery ability of trained CNN denoising model to the weak effective signals. As for the training data set, we construct a high-authenticity theoretical pure seismic data set for DAS-VSP data through the complexity of forward models and the diversification of physical parameters. In addition, we propose a new mean square error (MSE) loss function combined with an energy ratio matrix (ERM). The ERM can adjust the SNR between the signal patch and noise patch during the network training and thus increase the robustness of trained CNN denoising model for the DAS-VSP data with different SNRs, especially the DAS-VSP data with extremely low SNR. Both synthetic and real experiments prove the effectiveness of the proposed L-FM-CNN.
This survey investigates the cross-sectional association between nighttime road, rail and aircraft noise exposure and the probability to be highly sleep disturbed (%HSD), as measured by self-report ...in postal and online questionnaires. As part of the Swiss SiRENE study, a total of 5592 survey participants in the entire country were selected based on a stratified random sample of their dwelling. Self-reported sleep disturbance was measured using an ICBEN-style 5-point verbal scale. The survey was carried out in four waves at different times of the year. Source-specific noise exposure was calculated for several façade points for each dwelling. After adjustment for potential confounders, all three noise sources showed a statistically significant association between the nighttime noise level LNight at the most exposed façade point and the probability to report high sleep disturbance, as determined by logistic regression. The association was strongest for aircraft noise and weakest for road traffic noise. We a priori studied the role of a range of effect modifiers, including the "eventfulness" of noise exposure, expressed as the Intermittency Ratio (IR) metric, bedroom window position, bedroom orientation towards the closest street, access to a quiet side of the dwelling, degree of urbanization, sleep timing factors (bedtime and sleep duration), sleep medication intake, survey season and night air temperature. While bedroom orientation exhibited a strong moderating effect, with an Leq-equivalent of nearly 20 dB if the bedroom faces away from the nearest street, the LNight-%HSD associations were not affected by bedroom window position, sleep timing factors, survey season, or temperature.
Summary Noise is pervasive in everyday life and can cause both auditory and non-auditory health effects. Noise-induced hearing loss remains highly prevalent in occupational settings, and is ...increasingly caused by social noise exposure (eg, through personal music players). Our understanding of molecular mechanisms involved in noise-induced hair-cell and nerve damage has substantially increased, and preventive and therapeutic drugs will probably become available within 10 years. Evidence of the non-auditory effects of environmental noise exposure on public health is growing. Observational and experimental studies have shown that noise exposure leads to annoyance, disturbs sleep and causes daytime sleepiness, affects patient outcomes and staff performance in hospitals, increases the occurrence of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and impairs cognitive performance in schoolchildren. In this Review, we stress the importance of adequate noise prevention and mitigation strategies for public health.
After the European Environmental Noise Directive prescribed noise maps and action plans, wide scientific literature and a consistent number of mitigation strategies emerged for road, railway, ...airport, and industrial noise. Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to the noise produced by ports in their surroundings, even though there could be many areas affected by it. At present, more attention seems to be paid to noise produced underwater, mostly for military and security reasons and for its interference with wildlife, rather than airborne noise and its influence on human health. In the framework of a project aiming to shed more light on a topic so far under-investigated, this paper presents an acoustical characterization of different small vessels at various speeds that move around on a daily basis in every type of port, produced by means of short- and long-term measurements. The new information acquired was used to produce a map of noise generated by vessels moving in Livorno’s canals, which branch off in a densely inhabited area. The simulations were validated using long-term measurement. The number of citizens exposed was also estimated and used to calculate the number of highly annoyed people according to the recent curve for road traffic noise proposed by Guski et al. In order to prevent citizen exposure to noise and possible complaints about small boats, different scenarios and possible future situations such as various vessel speeds, limited flow, restricted areas for some categories, or new residential areas were studied.
This systematic review assesses the quality of the evidence across studies on the effect of environmental noise (road traffic noise, aircraft noise, railway noise, wind-turbine noise) on quality of ...life, wellbeing and mental health. Quantitative studies of noise effects on children and adults published from January 2005 up to October 2015 were reviewed. A total of 29 papers were identified. 90% of the papers were of cross-sectional design, with fewer studies of longitudinal or intervention design. Outcomes included depression and anxiety, medication use and childhood emotional problems. The quality of the evidence across the studies for each individual noise source was assessed using an adaptation of the GRADE methodology. Overall, given the predominance of cross-sectional studies, most evidence was rated as very low quality, with evidence of effects only being observed for some noise sources and outcomes. These ratings reflect inconsistent findings across studies, the small number of studies and a lack of methodological robustness within some domains. Overall, there are few studies of clinically significant mental health outcomes; few studies of railway noise exposure; and studies of large samples are needed. The lack of evidence for noise effects across studies for many of the quality of life, wellbeing and mental health domains examined does not necessarily mean that there are no effects: rather, that they have not yet been studied robustly for different noise sources.
Maritime transportation is recognized to have advantages in terms of environmental impact compared to other forms of transportation. However, an increment in traffic volumes will also produce an ...increase in noise emissions in the surroundings for a greener source, as ports are frequently surrounded by urban areas. When more sources or higher noise emissions are introduced, the noise exposure of citizens increases, and the likelihood of official complaints rises. As a consequence, among the most demanding aspects of port management is effective noise management aimed at a reduction in the exposure of citizens while ensuring the growth of maritime traffic. At the same time, the topic has not been thoroughly studied by the scientific community, mostly because port areas are challenging from a noise management point of view; they are often characterized by a high degree of complexity, both in terms of the number of different noise sources and their interaction with the other main transportation infrastructure. Therefore, an effective methodology of noise modeling of the port area is currently missing. With regard to the INTERREG Maritime Program, the present paper reports a first attempt to define noise mapping guidelines. On the basis of the current state-of-the-art and the authors’ experiences, noise sources inside port areas can be divided into several different categories: road sources, railway sources, ship sources, port sources, and industrial sources. A further subdivision can be achieved according to the working operation mode and position of the sources. This classification simplifies actions of identification of the responsible source from control bodies, in the case that noise limits are exceeded or citizen complaints arise. It also represents a necessary tool to identify the best placing of medium/long-term noise monitoring stations. The results also act as a base for a future definition of specific and targeted procedures for the acoustic characterization of port noise sources.
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