Social distribution of external costs of noise impact caused by transportation in Berlin

摘要

Noise from transport affects virtually everybody in urban areas. European Legislation urges municipalities to introduce noise mitigation measures for noise from road, rail and aviation. This analysis uses modeled noise levels from the strategic noise map to estimate the external costs from noise for the whole city of Berlin. The external costs consider different health effects and annoyance factors. All external costs were aggregated with a fine spatial resolution and relationships to the social status of the residents are examined. The study focuses on different socio-demographic groups such as population with high social status, poor, unemployed as well as immigrant population and their levels of exposure to noise and consequently external costs. In the regional context, results indicate that areas around the city airport are affected the most, while the outskirts of the city are more quiet. In the social context, inhabitants of deprived neighborhoods have to bare 23 % more external costs than average. In contrast, inhabitants of neighborhoods with a high social status have to bare 36 % less. Hence, the results suggest that degrees of noise exposure in the urban areas are heterogeneous and strongly driven by social and economic factors. Deprived individuals are expected to have less capability to avoid noise. Therefore the society may have to reconsider its goals in terms of environmental justice.