This paper addresses the negative effects resulting from the exposure to road traffic noise on people's well being with a focus on annoyance. Following the observations that noise exposures engender physiological reactions typical of stress, the non-auditory effects of noise on humans are generally viewed as being stress-related, and annoyance is one of the first and most direct reactions to environmental noise. In general terms, it is found that the continuous exposure of people to road traffic noise leads to suffering from various kinds of discomfort thus reducing appreciably the number of their well being elements. However drawing such a conclusion is hindered by difficulties when non-acoustical factors like sensitivity, socio-economic situation and age are also taken into account along with the usual acoustical factors of road traffic noise. The results of several decades of research on this topic have permitted lately to establish a quantitative relationship between the objective quantities characterizing road traffic noise, namely the day to night noise level, and the human subjective reaction to it as expressed by the percentage of highly annoyed people. These findings are important at both the society and the individual level in as much as they may help in regulating in a more efficient way the planning of road traffic activity in order to secure minimum comfort to the affected population.

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The permanently open auditory channel and the ability of the brain to process incoming acoustical stimuli even while asleep and to respond adequately is the essential precondition for noise-induced sleep disturbances which are regarded as the most deleterious effects of noise. In the past, research was mainly focused on the detection and description of the various effects of noise, on the influence of personal and environmental factors, on the determination of dose ­response relations and the definition of critical noise loads, above which noise becomes intolerable. These limits are, however, as yet only tentative or applicable for a very few situations and need to be verified or revised. The present paper is focused on the priorities for future research. These are in particular 1) the causal linkage between environmental noise, primary and secondary effects on the one hand and the hypothesized contribution to multifactorial chronic diseases, to chronic annoyance, and to permanent behavioral alterations on the other hand, 2) the identification of the causes for the great discrepancies between the small effects determined in the field and the large responses recorded in the laboratory, 3) temporal aspects such as sleep at unusual times (day sleep after nightshifts), definition of night-time and day-time, 4) the significance of the shoulder hours for subsequent sleep, 5) the individual vulnerability, 6) the accumulation of data from different studies.

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A supportive environment should take care of health. It is an environment that provides complete physical, mental and social well-being. It is not sufficiently characterized by infirmity or the absence of disease. It should trigger good feelings and safety (WHO, 2000). Interdisciplinary procedures are needed that include acoustics, physics, psychology, and sociology when a survey on perception of acoustic environments is carried out under the aspect of comfort. It is necessary to combine methods with different sensibilities in order to measure the subjective perception of noise in such an environment. The context, the focus of attention, and the knowledge of past experiences must be taken into account. (Ipsen, 2001) These three conditions are required to implement an adequate measurement. Subject-centered methodological procedures should be used to develop a suitable measurement procedure. Such procedures will be presented with the aim to improve social surveys that especially address the meaning of annoyance in an acoustic environment and the contribution of a soundscape.

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The annoyance-reaction is one of the central variables in noise research. After an introduction to different concepts and definitions of noise annoyance different scales of how noise annoyance can be measured are shown. The question is discussed whether disturbance effects of noise at different times of day are given. To clarify this problem, the results of a series of actual German noise studies are reported. In these studies differences between day- and night­time annoyance are found depending on the sound sources. For the case of road traffic noise no differences between day and night-time annoyance were found. In contrast, annoyance reactions are related to the time of day for railway and air traffic noise. Especially for aircraft noise, above a Leq of 50 dB(A) night-time annoyance rises faster than day-time annoyance. The effects are discussed in the frame of a cognitive model of noise annoyance. It is argued that annoyance judgments are based on an internal representation of the noise situation. Part of this representation are the event characteristics of the sound sources and their estimated impacts for disturbances at different times of day.

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The impact of aircraft movements on annoyance in the local community surrounding a major international airport was assessed for (a) patterns of complaints for the year, month, day-of­ the-week and time-of-day and (b) the frequency of complaining by individuals. Complaint data from Manchester Airport since 1991 and detailed analysis for 1998 were compared with associated information on noise monitoring and aircraft movements to investigate underlying biological and sociological patterns. The annual number of complaints peaked in 1996 when the 'Manchester Airport Second Runway Public Inquiry' was a major local issue and had a high profile in the local media. Since 1996 the number of flights has increased while the number of complaints has steadily fallen; from 50 to13 complaints per 1,000 movements from 1996 to 1999. Detailed inspection of the 1998 data revealed a total of 2072 noise complaints from 594 individuals but, while the majority of individuals complained once or twice, three individuals accounted for 41% of complaints. This introduced some bias into the results but there was; (a) a steady increase in complaints (per 1,000 movements) over the week from a low on Monday to a high on Saturday/Sunday; (b) a marked hourly variation over the 24 hours in both flight frequency (movements per hour) and complaints. However, the hourly patterns in flight frequency and complaints were clearly distinct. Calculations of the complaints per aircraft movement (a reflection of sensitivity) for each hour of the day showed a striking 24h pattern with twice as many complaints between 23.00 and 07.00 as the rest of the day (07.00­23.00). Late evening and night-time, particularly during the early hours of sleep, was the time of greatest sensitivity to aircraft, with or without the serial complainers. These results could be used to inform airport operations to minimize community disturbance.

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Most of subjective complaints about aircraft noise during night-time refers to sleep disruption. In order to protect populations who live around airports, it is of major importance to define levels of noise considered to be unacceptable during that particular time of the 24-hour period. In addition to an integrated indicator which describes the global noise exposure (Lden), the French authority on airport noise control (Autorite de Controle des Nuisances Sonores Aeroportuaires: ACNUSA) is considering the possibility of defining a maximum noise level [LAmax (1s)] that should not be exceeded at night (from 22.00 to 06.00) by any flying aircraft over residential areas. The main benefit of this single event indicator would be the identification of contravening vessels and application of possible penalty. It is believed that this type of sanction would help protecting sleep in highly noise-exposed areas.

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The effects of long-term exposure to road traffic noise on sleep quality were assessed using questionnaires and acetimetry. Results obtained before and after reduction in road traffic were compared. Sleep quality was improved after the reduction of noise levels. There was some correlation between acetimetry parameters and subjective parameters.

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This paper presents a model that uses a fuzzy rule based engine to predict noise annoyance reported by individuals in a social survey. The rules are proposed by the human expert and are based on linguistic variables. The approach then adapts the sufficiency degree or certainty of a rule to tune the model to a particular survey. Although all possible relations between exposure, attitudinal, emotional, personal, environmental and social variables are not included in the model as yet, the benefits of the new approach are clearly demonstrated. A major limitation that remains is the varying theoretical and empirical basis of the expert for different subset of annoyance determinants. Future applications may include more accurate predictions of noise annoyance for policy support and extraction of knowledge concerning the construct of annoyance from surveys.

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The EC has published a Green Paper on noise policy in the EU and has issued a directive on the assessment and reduction of environmental noise. This directive will make noise mapping mandatory for cities with at least 250.000 inhabitants. Due to the development in computer technology it is possible to calculate noise maps for large urban areas using the available data on buildings, ground profile, road and rail traffic. Examples for noise mapping are Birmingham (GB), Linz (A) and various German cities. Based on noise maps and empirical data on the correlation between annoyance and noise levels annoyance maps for different sources (rail, road, aircraft) can be calculated . Under the assumption that the annoyance for the different sources are only weakly correlated, a combined annoyance map can be calculated. In a second step using the distribution of the population the actual number of annoyed people can be evaluated. This analysis can be used, for example, to identify noise hot spots and to assess the impact of major traffic projects - roads, airports- on the noise situation as well as the impact on the population. Furthermore, the combined annoyance maps can be used to investigate on health effects and to check whether or not empirical correlations between annoyance and noise levels are sufficiently correct.

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Noise mapping is a method of presenting complex noise information in a clear and simple way either on a physical map or in a database. This mapping information can be either calculated or measured using a variety of techniques and methods. Furthermore, the results of such exercises can be presented in many different ways and used for a number of different purposes. This paper attempts to examine these issues in the light of the "mapping requirements" outlined in the recently proposed Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council, relating to the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise (Comm (2000) 468 final). This proposed Directive was laid before the Parliament and Council in the autumn of 2000. The First Reading of the proposal was successfully negotiated just before Christmas 2000. The Second Reading is likely to commence shortly.

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