This paper reviews ways of reducing surface transport noise by natural means. The noise abatement solutions of interest can be easily (visually) incorporated in the landscape or help with greening the (sub)urban environment. They include vegetated surfaces (applied to faces or tops of noise walls and on buildings’ façades and roofs), caged piles of stones (gabions), vegetation belts (tree belts...

Background: A high prevalence of noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) is observed amongst employees in the steel manufacturing industry. Objective: To determine the prevalence of NIHL and current noise abatement techniques implemented at a steel manufacturing plant. Methods: Structured questionnaires were completed by permanent employees at a steel-manufacturing plant for the purpose of collecting...

Urban traffic plans (UTPs) are tactical planning tools for managing urban areas and traffic noise abatement is one of their objectives, explicitly provided for under Italian law. To date, the various models and methods for estimating traffic noise have concerned its estimation in a point (or on a road segment). In this paper we propose a method that is able to evaluate the effects of UTPs on no...

To satisfy new legislation, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration implemented a national façade insulation program encompassing 2,500 dwellings exposed to high levels of road traffic noise. Thereby, the road owner brought the equivalent noise levels from road traffic in compliance with a new indoor limit of 42dB. Cost-effectiveness analyses show that façade insulation was the least expensiv...

Wind turbines' noise is frequently pointed out as the reason for local communities' objection to the installation of wind farms. The literature suggests that local residents feel annoyed by such noise and that, in many instances, this is significant enough to make them adopt noise-abatement interventions on their homes. Aiming at characterizing the relationship between wind turbine noise, annoy...