The CNOSSOS-EU initiative: A framework for road, railway, aircraft and industrial noise modelling for strategic noise mapping in EU Member States

Abstract

The European Directive 2002/49/EC relating to assessment and management of environmental noise establishes that common assessment methods for the determination of environmental noise indicators will be defined for use in the EU member states. The Institute for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP) of the Directorate General Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission is supporting the Directorate General for the Environment (DGENV) in the preparation of Common NOise aSSessment methOdS (CNOSSOS) for road, railway, aircraft and industrial noise to be used for producing strategic noise maps and relevant action plans in order to improve the reliability and the comparability of results across the EU Member States. A working group (WG1) of international experts was established to define: (i) the scope of strategic noise mapping with respect to the geographical basis and exposure and health risk assessment; (ii) a quality process for collecting and checking quality of input data; (iii) the relevant criteria for performing simplifications to the CNOSSOS-EU framework for strategic noise mapping purposes; and (iv) the accuracy of the overall assessment in relation to the quality and availability of input data and related simplifications. Preliminary discussions indicate that the harmonized method is to be designed for EU-wide noise mapping and EU-policy evaluation, though it might be applicable for local action planning. The group is preparing recommendations to other related working groups on the influence on yearly averaged environmental noise indices Lden and Lnight, on the parameters related to a policy option that may be considered relevant even if it influences the above indices moderately, and on cost-benefit, for both data collection and processing, since costs need to be clearly associated with the degree of importance of a given parameter and to be weighed against its influence on the noise indices.