The International Knowledge Center for the Local
Environment.
The Knowledge Center for noise and other environmental annoyance has been set up
at TNOin Delft
the Netherlands.
The project originated in 1987 with a compilation study to
establish dose-effect relationships for environmental noise.
In the course of the project data was gathered from noise
studies from various European countries. The effort it takes
to make these studies comparable is considerable. In the
course of this study methods were developed to compare different annoyance measures.
In 2002 a position paper for the EU was produced with relations for transportation noise and recently the results of a Dutch study on industry noise was added. The results look like this now:
Soon afterwards another study was commissioned to evaluate
smell annoyance. In this case it is even tougher to line up
different surveys.
In the course of these (and some other smaller) studies, a
database of standardized noise/annoyance and smell/annoyance
relationships was built up.
The scope of the knowledge center is:
to provide standardized reference material for future
studies
to answer questions that cannot be answered -easily-by the
single data.
- For example:
Is traffic at intersections more annoying then
free-flowing?
- Are the dose-response curves really shifting in
time?
- What about impulse corrections?
to stimulate international coordination in the field of
psycho-social research.
Present Contents
The present database -already containing 75.000 datapoints
for
noise and 4000 for smell- is the start of the knowledge
center. The data is coming from high quality environmental research from all over the
world. Every precaution has been taken to assure that the data are comparable.
What is to come next?
:
- Introduction of valuable material on military aircraft
noise data from Norway
- Introduction of data on vibrations.
- Data on time-activity patterns.
- In connection with ICBEN and ISO a standard for noise research will
be put forward.
- Setup of joint projects to answer questions of other parties.
The topic center is funded by the Ministry of Environment on
the base of a multiyear contract.
We are always interested in additional data and in interesting questions. Social
surveys as well as inventories. IF you have anything of interest, and are willing to share,
contact us PLEASE
More information can be had from
TNO's web site
Or mail to:
{mdotvdbatxs4alldotnl}
or:
{ henk dot miedema at dot tno dot nl}
(My apologies for these anti-spam addresses. Please replace the words -dot- and -at- by the appropriate symbols)