Monitoring the long-term development of the community noise situation.

Paper in proceeding, 2004

The community noise situation changes slowly and the goal – a community without noise disturbances – is very remote. It is, however, important to monitor if the development goes in direction of increasing or decreasing problems. The studies in the program Soundscape support to health have given some quantitative data on how differences in the acoustic soundscape can influence residents’ perceived soundscapes as well as their annoyance and sleep disturbance. It is insufficient to look only at the sound pressure levels outside the most exposed facades. Cost effective measures to reduce the adverse effects and promote positive effects can retrieved from soundscape studies. Monitoring the development by sufficiently accurate acoustic measurements in a sufficient number of points is very expensive. A better way is to try to measure the adverse effects of the community noise. Annoyance is one adverse candidate variable that can be measured at reasonable cost. A first study of this kind has been performed in Sweden through telephone interviews directed to 2000 persons. The results are promising.