New project to put a damper on noise pollution

Led by Surrey University, Noise Network Plus will feature engineers, policymakers, industry stakeholders and social scientists. The team will focus on conscious design to reduce the background hum of everyday life that many of us simply take for granted. Over the next 10-15 years, this could result in quieter buildings, products and transports systems, with significant benefits for people and the wider natural world. 

“Noise is a frequently neglected pollutant, but it has a big impact on health, society and the environment,” said Professor Mark Plumbley, project lead and Professor of Signal Processing at Surrey University’s Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP). “For example, road noise can lead to sleep disturbance and heart disease, costing £7-10bn each year in England alone. Once noise is out there, it is really hard to remove. We need to re-think how we design noise from the start.” 

The collaboration – which includes City St George's University of London, plus the Universities of Bath and Salford – will use the £1.8m EPSRC funding to build on the partners’ existing research facilities around noise pollution.

Noise Network Plus will explore how the growth of technologies such as wind turbines and drones are impacting our sonic landscapes, as well as noise at sea and the effects of uncrewed underwater vehicles on the marine environment. 

“The ocean is a noisy place, and a lot of the tools and technologies we rely on to deliver services either increase noise levels or are affected by noise,” said Alan Hunter, Professor in Autonomous Systems at Bath University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. 

“Taking oceanographic measurements, measuring marine wildlife populations, or inspecting underwater infrastructure, are all examples of activities affected by noise and of which we need to build a better understanding.” 

Alongside the mechanics of noise, the projects will also have a major focus on the health implications of noise pollution and how they can be addressed. According to the partners, this aspect of noise pollution is hugely overlooked, but small changes to our environment have the potential to reap big rewards.

“This is a rare and timely opportunity to form multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to develop engineering solutions addressing the problem of noise effects on health,” said Charlotte Clark, Professor of Environmental Epidemiology in the Population Health Research Institute at City St George’s, University of London.

“We know that noise affects health, but we know little about how to mitigate the problem. The missions developed in the Noise Network Plus have the potential to step up mitigation efforts that will translate into major, long-term public health gains.”