One's Personal Noise Footprint: what's your share In environmental noise production?

摘要

Environmental noise is generally considered a problem that should be tackled at governmental level. This is justified as long as citizens cannot really influence the amount of noise that is produced in their neighborhood. The consequence, however, is that people are not aware of their share in environmental noise, or worse, they are not interested at all in environmental noise and its (hidden) effects on health. Changing this attitude may be required for a sustainable quieter environment. In many cases individuals can choose between different means of transportation. Citizens are willing to take environmental aspects like CO_2 emission and energy wastage into consideration, but up to now cannot decide on the noise impact. Will I take the bus or drive by car? Will I take the high speed train or an airplane? What is my share in noise impact, as a passenger, in these cases? To what extend do I have a share in industrial noise as well, being consumer and labourer? In this article a method is given to calculate one's personal contribution in environmental noise. In order to visualise this contribution, we are borrowing the concept 'noise footprint' which is used in aircraft noise control and reform this into a 'personal noise footpring (PNF)'. The PNF has no directional information. It represents the area which is exposed to noise and it indicates which activity of individuals is dominant. Besides visualisation advantages, the noise footprint features simple maths instead of logarithms. Strenght and weaknesses of concept are discussed in this article.