SILENCE - Quieter Surface Transport in Urban Areas
Overview
Background & policy context:
For decades, European policy-makers have concentrated on regulating noise emission from sources such as road and rail vehicles, aeroplanes and other equipment by fixing maximum sound levels, which has resulted in significant noise reduction from individual sources.
For example, noise from individual cars has been reduced by 85% since 1970 and noise from trucks by 90%. However, no consideration has been given to reducing noise emission in urban areas and for some sources, such as railways, there was no EU legislation setting noise creation limits. As a result of this, and in response to the regulatory gap, the Commission Directive 2002/49/EC, relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise, was adopted.
Its main aim was to provide a common methodology to address noise problems across the EU and it is in this context that the activities of SILENCE are to be seen.
Objectives:
The main objective of SILENCE was to develop an integrated methodology and technology for improved control of surface transport noise in urban areas looking at:
- noise control at source;
- noise propagation;
- noise emission;
- human perception of noise for road, rail, infrastructure and cities.
SILENCE would provide:
- relevant and world-leading technologies to assure efficient control of surface transport noise;
- innovative strategies for action plans for urban transport noise abatement and practical tools for their implementation;
- a significant reduction of people's exposure to noise, especially under real urban conditions.
The expected outcome of the project was a reduction of noise emission in urban areas of up to 10 dB(A).
Project outputs included:
- identification of annoying acoustic components of vehicles in order to develop guidelines for individual source-oriented noise reductions;
- a global modelling tool for road and rail applications to predict noise radiation into the environment;
- design and hardware solutions for noise reduction with respect to vehicle/tyre/road interaction, under typical (sub-)urban conditions;
- experimental and calculation tools and advanced noise reduction technologies for road vehicles;
- highly efficient systems and technologies for trams, metros, freight and suburban trains for noise reduction and control;
- advanced integral design and maintenance of lower noise road surfaces;
- noise reduction solutions for rail infrastructure and operation;
- a tool-kit for cities with practical urban traffic management techniques for noise reduction;
- guidance for implementing noise action plans in cities.
Methodology:
SILENCE research is both vertically and horizontally integrated. Two vertical working areas - I) Vehicle Noise and Source and II) Transport Infrastructure, Operations and Management - integrate both rail and road sectors within urban environments. The horizontal sub-projects integrate road and rail in terms of analysis, parameter definition and applications such as scenarios.
The SILENCE approach starts with three steps: the assessment of urban noise situations based on data from European cities, the definition of two urban noise scenarios as reference basis for the whole project, the identification of the related noise abatement priorities and noise reduction potentials. On this basis, the RTD activities are developed and integrated to an unique system of noise abatement technologies and tools and methodologies for noise reduction and policies.
Thereby, the essential categories of urban traffic vehicles are considered, such as cars, light duty trucks, buses, trams, metros, trains and others. One key element of this RTD approach is the global modelling for the prediction of noise effects on urban scenarios. Based on models for individual traffic elements developed in previous EU projects the global model predicts the overall noise emission of complex traffic situations and allows the prediction of noise emission by a source model coherent with the models used in HARMONOISE. This global model is used to apply the noise abatement technologies developed to the two reference noise scenarios, to predict their noise reduction effects and to validate the noise reduction potentials.
Thus, the expected key results and deliverables of SILENCE are
- a noise abatement technology platform for road and rail vehicles, urban transport infrastructure and traffic flow aspects, and
- tools, methodologies and input data for decision support systems, urban action plans and future noise scenarios.
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