ETC/ATNI Report 13/2021: A European reference grid (1*1 km) with noise exposure information and noise contour maps for urban areas in relation to road, railways and aircraft noise. Methodological description.
This report provides the methodology to populate the European reference grid at 1 x 1 km with the estimated number of people exposed to different noise levels and the area of these noise bands distributed inside and outside agglomerations.
02 Dec 2021
Miquel Sainz de la Maza, Núria Blanes, Jaume Fons, Eulàlia Peris
Prepared by:
Miquel Sainz de la Maza (UAB), Núria Blanes (UAB), Jaume Fons (UAB)
According to the Environmental Noise Directive (END) specifications, data on people exposed to noise sources inside urban areas are reported aggregated per agglomeration. This level of aggregation is insufficient for analysis with other environmental stressors like air pollution and further spatial analysis. Data reported on major sources have the same spatial limitations since it is reported at country level. Therefore, this report describes the methodology to estimate the population exposed to noise sources inside and outside agglomerations with a 1 x 1 km grid spatial resolution. The proposed approach takes advantage of the noise contour bands (assimilated to noise emissions) reported by countries, which are also disaggregated into the 1 x 1 km grid and further combined with land cover and population data, both inside and outside agglomerations.
Nevertheless, the final product foreseen under ETC/ATNI Action Plan 2021 will only populate the European reference grid with the number of people exposed to different noise levels and noise contour maps for both Lden and Lnight for road and aircraft noise inside agglomerations.
