QUADMAP Objectives

Current practices about selection, assessment and management of Quiet Areas in EU Countries, though regulated by the EU Directive 49/2002/EC on Environmental Noise (commonly abbreviated END), appear to be extremely fragmented and inhomogeneous. Each country during past years has adopted a set of strategies strictly related to their specific contexts; as a consequence strategy transfer among EU Countries is now a hard task.

The main objective of this project is to develop a harmonized methodology for selection, assessment (combining quantitative and qualitative parameters) and management (noise mitigation, increasing of usability of areas and users satisfaction) of  Quiet Urban Areas (QUAs), the aim being to overcome the current impasse.

These objectives will be attained leaving each responsible body free to produce its own Action Plan, assessing and addressing both specific territorial features and political priorities.

The project is focused on the problem of Quiet in Urban Areas, where not only noise limits have to be considered and where noise is one of the sources of pollution causing discomfort. The validated eventual results of the project will facilitate urban planners to apply standard procedures for identification, delimitation and prioritization of QUAs.

One significant part of the project will be devoted to develop and test methods for the determination of relative weight of concurrent sources of discomfort, considering different acoustic factors and indicators.

Another important topic is the systematic use of soundscape analysis in the qualitative acoustic analysis and in the general stakeholder opinion collection about present and desired features of selected QUA.