Francesco D’Alessandro

The contribution of LIFE+ NADIA project on the implementation of the European Directive on Environmental Noise

Abstract NADIA, acronym of Noise Abatement Demonstrative and Innovative Actions and information to the public, was a European Project funded as part of the announcement Life+ 2009 between October 2010 and June 2014. Five Italian partners were involved in the project: two provinces, (Genova, the coordinating beneficiary, and Savona), two municipalities (Vicenza and Prato), and a technical coordinator (CIRIAF/University of Perugia). All the public bodies were obliged to perform the actions required by the Environmental Noise Directive, i.e., noise mappings of major roads for the provinces and of the agglomerations for the municipalities and the consequent noise action plans. The four public bodies, with the support of the research centre, decided to go beyond the mandatory requirements of END in order to achieve the following main objectives: (i) to improve the methodologies for the realization of noisemappings and action plans, with a particular focus on road traffic noise; (ii) to increase the awareness of citizens and of potential stakeholders by focused communication and dissemination activities; (iii) to assess the technical and economic feasibility of best practices in tackling road traffic noise. The paper reports a summary of the activities performed by the partners during the project.

The Noise Abatement Plan of an Italian Road Network: A Comparison Between Standard and Innovative Methodologies

The Italian legislation prescribes that the managing authorities of transportation infrastructures have to prepare a noise control and abatement plan, using established procedures and indexes defined both at national and regional level. The aim of the paper is to compare the standard procedure given by Umbria Region with three innovative methodologies proposed by the authors to increase the adequacy and the quality of roads noise planning activity. Both standard and innovative approaches require the creation of a ranking of priority to define where noise abatement actions are most necessary. The proposed methodologies introduce at various levels a more detailed phase of noise mapping, by using facade noise map instead of grid noise map, and define new rankings of priority based on improved location of calculation points. More accurate and realistic noise plans allow to optimize the budget allocated for acoustic rehabilitation and to mitigate the most critical situations. The innovative procedures can be easily transferred at European level for the realization of Noise Action Plans requested by the Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC.

Innovative Approaches for Noise Management in Smart Cities: a Review

According to the European Commission, “a Smart City is a city seeking to address public issues via ICT-based solutions on the basis of a multi-stakeholder, municipally based partnership”. The smart city concept “encompasses a more interactive and responsive city administration and safer public spaces”. The new paradigm of smart city, which is closely correlated to Internet of Things, requires a new approach also for environmental noise assessment and monitoring, in order to establish noise management strategies that should be more dynamic, widespread and closer to citizens’ wellbeing. In the last decade, new technologies and methodologies have been developed in order to supply smart cities with smart noise solutions. This paper presents three examples which are considered by the authors among the most interesting and promising ones, i.e. dynamic noise mapping, smart sensors (and in particular, the use of smartphones in environmental noise assessment) and soundscape approach.