 about the noise and some experience from Sweden and EU this webinar is taking place within the project for development of strategy induction plan for environment within this project. For the first time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the environmental topics will be discussed in parallel across the levels of government and we will be preparing strategy and action plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina federation, Republica subsca and the podskodistik. And another important point about this topic is that this is the first time that we have strategic approach to the noise within the environmental strategy. This project started in September 2019 and it will end in April 2020 2022. I apologize. The project uses a participatory approach both experts and stakeholders from the institutions, non-governmental sector, business sector and the research sector directly contribute to and participate in the development of the strategy and action plan which covers different topics. These topics include water, waste, biodiversity and nature conservation, air quality and climate change and energy, chemical safety and noise, sustainable resources management and environmental management. Today's webinar well is the part of the responsibility of the working group for chemical safety and noise. I'm Melina Djajčovalovac. I am the lead expert for chemical safety and noise and together with me my colleague Bodislav Malinović is moderating this group and he will present the current situation in this area. After Bodislav we will have some very interesting presentation by Liza Johansson from Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Ericsson from the Karolowska Institute in Sweden and then we will hear a presentation from Viktor Minčovici from Romania. You will hear more about them in the continuation. Let me just mention that you can also ask questions during this webinar and we will answer your questions during the Q&A session. You can use the Q&A box to send your questions and I encourage you that you ask questions during the presentation and the presenters will answer your questions during the Q&A sessions. Now may I invite my colleague Malinović to present the current situation on environmental noise in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thank you, Malina. Good morning to all participants in today's webinar. I am Bodislav Malinović and together with Malina I am moderating today's webinar and within the ESAP project 2030 plus I am moderated with her, the working group for chemical safety and noise. I am a visiting professor of the technology faculty at the university in Banyaloka and I will provide just a brief introduction in today's topic and provide a summary of the situation in the area of noise in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Malina, can you confirm that I shared my screen? Thank you. As we already said we are working within the working group the chemical safety and noise and we cover two topics. One of them is noise. Our topic is the environmental noise and I would like to read the definition of the environmental noise under the EU directive where the noise is defined as unwanted and sound harmful for human health including the noise coming from railways, industrial plants and roads. This directive does not cover the noise from residential areas and self-reported noise or noise from military or from workplaces. This directive of the EU requires necessary measures that's the noise mapping inclusion or involvement of the public and development of action plans. On the right hand side you can see a screenshot from the environmental agency of the EU which was comprised from multiple maps from EU countries. As for the current situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina we cover all four jurisdictions, Bosnia and Herzegovina, both entities and the Bačko district at the pH level. The responsibilities are assigned only in the area of transport and that is covered by the Ministry of Transport of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ministry of Foreign Trade and the Directorate for Railways and Air Traffic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is a number of laws in place and regulations and this is covered quite well however in Bosnia and Herzegovina we don't have any action plan or maps of the noise. As for the federation in Bosnia and Herzegovina the situation is slightly better because we have the law on noise protection in place but this is the only regulation that covers the noise but it is not a good basis for transposition of directives. The law envisages the development of environmental impact studies but there is no activities on development of noise maps at the level of the canton's or the federation. The situation in the public aspska is slightly worse. The noise is regulated by the law on environmental protection. There are some elements in this law however there is a rule book in place which was passed in 1889. The law does not envisage development of maps of noise or action plans for noise management and therefore there is no information on activities in this area. The situation in the Bosnia district is similar to the situation in the public aspska. The law on environmental protection contains several provisions that pertain to the noise however as for the noise emission they applied the regulation on permitted intensity of noise and sounds from 1989. Let me just reflect on the previous activities of our working groups. We have held two meetings so far across the levels so in eight meetings in total within our strategic goal which was defined at the beginning of the project and that's the protection of human health and improvement of welfare and quality of life for all. We identified some key challenges which are more or less similar across the levels and that's the lack of an adequate legal framework which regulates EUR keys, dispersion and insufficient clear institutional responsibilities with regard to the noise management, environmental noise management, low level of knowledge of public officials and the public on the effects of the noise and lack of strategic planning. Then we also identified some objectives that's the development of the legal framework then setting up of coordination mechanism and clear institutional responsibilities with regard to the implementation of the EUR keys improved strategic planning improved knowledge of public on noise management, environmental noise management and improved capacities of public officials and the public. This is the result of our work so far and for all the participants of today's webinar I suppose we have other participants than the members of the working group but I encourage all of you to make an effort to contribute to the development of ESAP through e-consultations you can find more information on our website www.esapba.ba what you need to do is to open our website register and then you will be receiving information on a regular basis and you will be able to participate in the development of the environmental strategy and action plan you can also find information on our facebook page bihesap and that would be all from my side Melina back to you thank you Bodislav this was a very good introduction let me also share with you that this webinar was organized in order to enhance the knowledge of the participants of the working group for further work and for the next meeting which will take place late this month and before we start with the next presentation which will be presented by Lisa Johansson you can also use the language option you have been provided with this information in the invitation but let me remind you that you can use the icon the globe on the bottom of the screen where you can select either bih or English language option so you can listen in your own language now I would like to introduce Lisa Johansson from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency you can see her CV she has previously worked as an acoustic consultant and has experience of noise measurements noise mapping and noise abatement progress from road rail aircraft and industrial noise now Lisa you have the floor thank you I hope you can hear me good in this presentation I will start with summarizing how noise is regulated in the EU this will be a rather short summary and later today I will go into more detail specifically concerning the environmental noise directive which is one of the major parts of the EU noisy key you can change slide there please I think if you go back one slide yes thank you yes my name is Lisa Johansson and I work at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency as a scientific officer I work with mainly two areas which is noise in general and also with guidelines and environmental permit processes for airports and harbours my background is that I am an acoustician I have a decent degree in acoustics and I worked for about 15 years as a consultant with mostly environmental noise project as such I had a small part in the first round of noise mapping according to the END in of Stockholm which turned out to be a very difficult project we hadn't done that kind of project before and we underestimated the time and effort it took to finalize that project so it took much longer than expected and actually became a substantial financial loss for the company I worked with but on the upside we also learned a lot and I have later worked with other cities that are about to do noise mapping and also with action plans and other noise abatement programs you can change slide there please noise regulations in the EU is divided in two parts first there is a collection of regulations concerning the noise sources like road vehicles and aircrafts and then there is the environmental noise directive or the END which states that all large cities roads railroads and airports should report how many people are exposed to noise to the EU every five years and they should also produce an action plan every five years to show how they plan to reduce the numbers of exposed to noise and as I said I will go into more detail about the END later today as for the regulations they are as I said specifying noise emission regulations for road vehicles aircrafts railroad and other outdoor equipments and you can change slide please for the regulations on road vehicles there are a few to considers these states limit values for the noise emission for different kind of vehicles both trucks motorcycles normal cars etc and there is also specific regulations concerning tire noise since one of the major sound sources for traffic noise is the connection between the road surface and the tire and you might have seen the classification in the image to the right for tires where it's specified how the tire performs in terms of fuel consumption grip on back surfaces and also noise and these kinds of classifications are meant to make it easier for the consumers to do an informed choice when buying new tires next slide for railroads there are also several regulations that in different ways concern noise I will not go into every detail of this but one of the bigger questions that have been discussed in the EU these latest few years is a ban on railway breaks of castor iron on freight trains changing the brakes to composite materials would significantly reduce the noise emitted from the trains but it has also been shown that composite brakes the quieter ones that they want to change to are not as safe as castor iron brakes in very cold temperatures and since railway carts are meant to travel all across Europe and they are very much international and travel across the country borders they must work both in the warmth of southern Spain for example and in the cold northern Finland and this is a typical example where you have to weigh the environmental factors against what could possibly be an obstacle for the free trade in the EU next slide for aircraft noise there is also limits concerning noise emission older aircrafts with high noise emission so-called chapter three aircrafts are banned from many european airports and the regulation of aircrafts is in many ways international with the international organ ikau responsible for most of the policies concerning traffic safety and environment from aircraft there is also the european organ iasa working with similar similar questions the member states in iasa is the EU and a few others like norway and boston harsegovina is one of the pan european partners to iasa and is as such cooperating with iasa in some of the agreements but they are not as of today a full member and you can change slide and finally there is a european directive concerning noise emissions from equipment used outdoors and this directive is targeting a broad range of equipment and as you can see from the examples in the pictures it is everything from large machines and vehicles used for groundworks and contracting down to small privately owned lawn movers and this directive includes both limit values for noise emission for certain equipment and also methods standardized methods for noise measurements for that can use for can be used for many kinds of equipments so it's a very broadly targeting directive and next slide and apart from the noise emission there is also the environmental noise directive that targets the exposure rather than the emission from noise sources and in short the ENV says that large cities railroads airports and roads should calculate noise maps and the number of inhabitants exposed to noise every five years and report this to the EU and they should use standardized methods to do these calculations and then they should also make an action plan every five years on how to reduce noise and how to reduce the numbers of exposed and that action plan should also be reported to the EU every five years and as I said I will later today go into detail on how to work with the ENV and what the steps needs to be taken to fulfill the requirements of the ENV so I will not go into more detail about that now so this this part was the short summary of the EU regulations in general and then after we have heard Charlotte I will return to talk more about the ENV thank you thank you Lisa now we are about to hear presentation by Charlotte Ericsson Caroline Scott Institute let's see her biography briefly as well so Dr Charlotte Ericsson is an environmental epidemiologist at the Center for Occupational Environmental Medicine in Stockholm and she's a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine Caroline Scott Institute her main area of research is health effects of community noise exposure in particular cardiovascular and metabolic outcomes she frequently participates in health risk assessments regarding community noise on regional national and international levels Charlotte please take the floor yes good morning everyone I'm Charlotte Ericsson and I would like to thank you for this opportunity to present on the impact of noise on human health next slide please so as we've heard the definition of community noise according to the END the environmental noise directive is that it is unwanted or harmful outdoor sound created by human activity for instance noise emitted at different means of transport road railway aircraft traffic and also industrial noise or activities but there are of course many other sources around us for instance construction work noise from neighbors restaurants bars and waste management and more so the the picture is rather complex when it comes to noise exposure in general next slide please community noise is also an increasing problem and it is actually one of our most common environmental problems and it's also a problem that continues to increase we have in Sweden we now have 85 percent of the population living in urbanized areas and we also have an increase of traffic or transports and a densification and building of new homes in really noise polluted areas next please it has been estimated that approximately 20 of the european population live in areas where the traffic noise levels can be harmful to human health around 55 dB and the major source is road traffic followed by railway noise aircraft noise and also industrial noise but this is likely to be an underestimation since the european environmental noise directive does not cover all areas of of the EU next please so in the in 2018 the WHO came out with new environmental noise guidelines with the aim to provide recommendations for protecting human health from exposure to environmental noise originating from various sources and this regulation was based on several systematic reviews and meta-analysis on critical health effects of noise and you can see the link to the document here in my slide next please so there are many different health effects from following noise exposure at very high noise levels it may cause difficulties for the hearing organ and cause hearing loss and even tinnitus but this is mostly common in occupational settings so when it comes to more moderate noise levels from community noise we have a number of other responses for instance a general annoyance response difficulties in communication and speech perception and loss of concentration and also effects on cognitive functioning noise exposed populations also often experience sleep disturbances and may be found in a state of chronic stress which in turn may enhance the risk for several cardiovascular and metabolic diseases for instance hypertension myocardial infarction stroke and obesity so I would like to go through the evidence on some of these health outcomes here for you now next please noise annoyance is the most common effect in noise exposed populations it is a subjective experience of discomfort and irritation the rising from unavoidable sounds and usually it's measured by self-report the percentage of highly annoyed in a population denoted percent HA highly annoyed and the degree of annoyance depends on a large number of factors it is closely related of course to the characteristics of the sound the volume the frequency the duration and the temporality to mention some next please the annoyance response also depends on the situation you're in what time of day it is and what type of activity you're engaging yourself in like sleeping resting reading or some more activity it also depends on who you are your personal factors age and mental and physical health your attitudes towards the noise source and also coping mechanisms that is your possibilities to avoid the noise next please so on a population level we can see clear exposure response patterns between noise levels and the proportion of highly annoyed in the population so w show has defined 10 percent highly annoyed as a called so-called critical effect and this is reached at about the 53 dB LDN for road traffic for 54 for railway traffic and already at 4 to 5 dB LDN for aircraft traffic next please so it seems that aircraft noise at any given level is the most disturbing of these traffic noise sources this figure shows an example from stock on data where you can clearly see that the annoyance response is much higher for aircraft than for road traffic and railway noise but of course the annoyance response in a population is also regulated or moderated by several factors for example we saw effects of building type of the construction year of the building if you have an access to quite side or not and whether or not the building was sound proofed next please this is again an example from our stock on population where we saw an increased risk for reduced communication and speech perception as a function of the road traffic noise so here we can see an increased reporting of communication problems relating to the outdoor noise level at your home and this was significant associations for both road railway and aircraft noise so a clear exposure response association for all traffic noise sources with communication difficulties next please and noise may also interfere with our cognitive functions with performance and also with learning and this is especially true when we have complex tasks with high demands on speech perception concentration and also memory and potential mechanisms for this is that sound main mask information and lead to lower speech perception but noise may also distract our attention increase stress levels and lead to tiredness and exhaustion next please yes so children are seen as a particular vulnerable group when it comes to cognitive effects of noise and children are still evolving both mentally and physically and their cognitive processes are not completely developed so they're therefore more easily distracted by sounds in their environment and studies on traffic noise and cognitive functioning in children show for example effects on reading comprehension deteriorated standardized tests worsened memory functioning and also effects on children's motivation to finish tasks so sort of learned helplessness the so-called ranch study is the today largest study available on cognitive effects of children in children of noise so it involved approximately 2000 children in the ages 9 to 10 years going to schools around three major european airports it was shiphole in amsterdam barrages in madrid and also Heathrow london and in this particular study they found associations between aircraft noise and impaired reading comprehension episodic memory working memory and also sustained attention but there were no associations with with road traffic here next please turning to sleep disturbances sleep is a necessity for both physical and mental health it is an important outcome per se but it's also important as a mediator to more serious illness for example sleep problems have been associated with cardiovascular diseases obesity and also depression sleep can be measured both objectively through for example polysomnography eeg activity and muscle tonus or subjectively through self self report of high sleep disturbance this figure shows the normal sleep structure a stable sleep structure over the night of approximately eight hours it shows different sleep stages from quite deep sleep in the beginning of the night to more lighter sleep rem sleep or dream sleep in the end of the night and especially the deep sleep the shortwave sleep is important for restoration and memory consolidation next please so this is what happens when we have a night with disturbed sleep noise disturbed sleep so we have a reduced total sleep time due to for example insomnia awakenings during the night and also early awakenings in the morning so what happens is that we have a fragmented sleep pattern with shorter periods of coherence shortwave sleep and REM sleep we also have cardiovascular arousals for example increases in blood pressure and heart rates and an increased level of stress hormones for example cortisol and this is possible since the auditory system is always open for impressions even when we sleep next please yes so this shows you that there is an association between the noise levels within the bedroom and the probability of sleep stable changes or awakenings due to road traffic aircraft and railway noise so you can see that the more noise we have in our bedroom the greater is the risk of going into lighter sleep stages or even to a state of awake next there are also on a population level clear exposure exposure associations between noise levels outdoor in the residential areas and the percentage in the population reporting being highly sleep disturbed and again we can see here that aircraft noise seems to be more disturbing than a road traffic and railway noise at any particular noise level when it comes to the cardiovascular and metabolic effects of community noise there are several potential biological mechanisms present here so in the acute phase noise may actually cause a stress response through the activation of our sympathetic nervous system and also the endocrine system so what happens is that we have hemodynamic and metabolic and immunological effects of this noise exposure for example we have an increase in stroke volume and heart rate vasoconstriction which increases blood pressure and also release of free fatty acids and mobilization of glucose to mention a few and in the long run noise exposure may lead both to annoyance and sleep disturbances as we talked about but also may cause a dysregulation of the stress mechanism and this would lead to an increased risk of several cardiovascular diseases for instance then hypertension myocardial infarction and stroke and also during recent years it's been speculating that noise may actually also cause metabolic outcomes in terms of increased risk of obesity glucose regulation and type 2 diabetes next please so this is just to show you where we are at with regards to state of research at the moment and this is based on the WHO literature reviews and meta-analysis so for the evidence on hypertension high blood pressure and these studies have mainly focused on road traffic noise so there are at the time at 2015 26 cross-sectional studies showing an increased risk of about 5 percent pretend decibel increase in noise level but there were only one present cohort study which is longitudinal so this is a limitation and the WHO actually created the evidence as low quality due to the fact that we had studies of rather low quality the cross-sectional rather than the longitudinal design next please however with regards to ischemic heart disease such as myocardial infarction the evidence is rated as high quality and this is because there are several longitudinal studies which have followed up people up in time for quite a long time and see that noise is actually associated with an increased risk of incident ischemic heart disease and this evidence is the strongest for road traffic noise with a relative risk of 1.08 which means that we have an 8 percent increase in risk per 10 dB noise level and it is statistically significant next slide and this shows the exposure response association and as you can see the risk of ischemic heart disease seemed to increase with increasing noise level starting from approximately 50 somewhere 55 dB L10 next the evidence on outcomes such as stroke obesity and diabetes diabetes is more scarce we have fewer studies and they are mainly of cross-sectional design which limits then our possibilities to infer causality but we do have some studies indicating associations and as we've talked about we have also clear biological mechanisms underlying these associations which warrants then continuous research but overall the WHO graded the evidence as low quality mainly because of a lack of studies next so just to finish off a few words about the noise abatement strategies which we will hear more also from this side in a short while in Sweden we follow the European environmental noise directive since we are a member state of the EU and this is the main instrument to identify noise pollution levels and to trigger necessary actions and these are recurrent processes recurring in cycles of five years with noise mappings and also noise action planning and we're now also turning to development of common noise exposure assessment methods to be able to compare data more across Europe next so these are just some examples on how you can tackle noise issues and how you can actually reduce noise exposure in populations and prevent the noise exposure effects on health in the population so to start with to adhere to the WHO noise guidelines and also to the national guidelines is of crucial importance you must also take noise into account early on in the planning process to prevent the harmful effects for example you have to be careful with placement of new residential areas schools roads railways and airports etc you should also turn to building construction and promote the building or construction of quiet courtyards and make sure the installation of buildings is is adequate and also take into account the bedroom positioning in the buildings during the night so that people can sleep well you can also tend to the traffic situation as as such for example traffic can be rooted outside the city center at least the heavy traffic or even if you have the possibility you can lead the traffic below ground in tunnels and you can work on speed limits lower speed it really reduces noise implementation of electric cars can lead to at least that low noise lower speeds reduce the noise you can work with the low noise tires as mentioned there are regulations in the EU for this you can have quite asphalt we have worked a lot of this with this in Sweden to try to produce asphalt which is low noise emissions you can also work with the local noise screens and other technical solutions in existing buildings such as changing windows or ventilations to more sound reduced reduction variants and finally you as an individual can also have different coping mechanisms to cope with the noise for example use of ear plugs or keeping your windows closed so this is just a battery of examples of what you how you can work with reducing harmful effects of noise in your population and with that I would like to thank you and show this I think beautiful green noise screen which not only reduces noise but also promotes biological diversity so many thanks thank you indeed for this excellent presentation it was very interesting for me the environmental issues become serious once once you learn about the effects on human health for me it was very interesting to hear about the effects on children in development and I believe that was the same for other participants I was not aware of this information and thank you very much for this very detailed and interesting information which relies on the outcome of studies of large-scale studies which was confirmed which we have confirmed by the World Health Organization you finished early and then is in visit the couple of minutes earlier now according to our agenda we have a short break and we will take 15 minutes break and will reconvene at 10 o'clock then we will continue with the presentation from Mr Viktor Mitrovich from Romania so see you after the break we will resume with our webinar and I hope that the technical issues some participants had have been resolved let me inform you that we currently have 95 participants we are very happy to have such a large number of participants and today you've heard some points about the EU AKIS which have certain requirements regarding the noise management the community noise management and you've also heard something about the effects of the noise on human health now we'll hear about the implementation of EU regulations in the noise management we will have Viktor Minkiewicz from Romania you can see his short CV Mr Minkiewicz is an advisor at the Romanian Ministry of Environment where he has been working for 16 years in the field of noise assessment and management his activities also include drafting and promoting legislation in the field of noise ensuring transposition and monitoring the implementation of the END directive in Romania participating in working groups organizing the field of noise by the EU Commission and the European Environment Agency and TAICS he was the TAICS expert mission in the community Turkish community on Cyprus now Viktor you have the floor hello everybody you hear me okay thank you okay yes we can hear you well my name is Viktor Minkiewicz I work in a ministry of environment water and forest from Romania and my field of activity is noise I'm glad to be here with you and because yesterday was the international day for women I want to wish to women which are present at this meeting a beautiful spring and a lot of happiness I will also like to express my gratitude to the organizers for the opportunity to they offer me to be here with you and today I will present the Romanian exemplar in approaching the environmental noise in the regarding the situation of noise in Romania before EU accession before we become a member member of the European Union I can tell you that was before 2007 which was the year when Romania became the member state in Romania the noise was assessed only using measurements at the level of our polytechnic university of Bucharest uh together together with Bucharest city hall in 17s was made some noise maps in Bucharest but only using measurements uh generally the noise measurements in this city in the in these cities in the past was made by the city hall together with with the research institute from a communist period uh regarding the legislation in that period was available the some legislation regarding hygiene and public health rules on the living environment of the population and these rules provide provided also some rules for noise uh there was also a national standard uh at that time which provide limit values for noise in urban areas this national standard here exists also now but in the updated version in the 2004-2007 period was the period of accession of EU of Romania in that period we uh ensured the first implement over the first transposition of N in our legislation and of course because we didn't was a member state this transposition was not a full transposition uh slide to please thank you after the transposition of N which was made first time in 2005 uh in the first year of our presence in the European Union in 2007 Romania need to make strategic noise maps for nine agglomerations one uh one major airport around 250 000 kilometers of major rounds major routes and around 67 000 uh kilometers of major value uh that this task was very very hard for us because it was the first year where Romania was a member state of European Union and we didn't well prepared for this in term of technical preparation of noise mapping in this the government decision for 2005 which ensured the first transposition of N in our legislation the responsibility the output the responsible authorities were generally defined but as as well as agglomeration main route major airport and major railways but they were not identified by name being provided in the legislation only only the criteria for identifying identifying them for this reason was very hard for our authorities to fulfill this task in good condition in 2007 in order to improve this situation in 2007 we make the first modification of our government decision which ensured the transposition of N in our national legislation in order to solve the infringement which Romania received for the European Commission for bad transposition and also to to solve some aspects regarding to improve some aspects regarding regarding the the responsibility of authorities and also to to to identify by name in our legislation all our agglomeration major roads major railways and major airports also in 2008 2011 period was developed guidelines for noise mapping for action planning and regulation for noise limit but unfortunately this this guidelines not was available for the first round of noise mapping they have action planning but only for the second and for the third round of them in 2012 in 2017 in 2012 in 2016 we also we have also two new government decision which made some modification of our legislation regarding who have the responsibility to make noise map and action plans for some noise sources inside agglomeration in 2018 Romania received the first infringement for bad implementation we didn't make the action plans in in in time but we solved this infringement because the authorities who were late which action planning solved the problem and finalized the action plans also in 2009 we make a new legislation a law and to rebuild all previous government decision and all sub our legislation in a noise wheel this law also ensured the transposition of new gnosis directive that gnosis common methods for noise mapping now we work to modify again the law in order this law in order to ensure the transposition of other new directive regarding those effect relations which replace the next three of environmental noise directly also this year we need to put in law also some new guidelines regarding noise mapping and action plan next year we need also to taking consideration to make to put in our legislation the requirements of the new reporting mechanisms which is developed now by the European Commission this new directive is not finalized but I think this year will be enforced next slide please in Romania and also in European Union was three rounds of noise mapping and action planning until now and in this slide we see the evolution of number of agglomeration major those major failures and major airports in Romania for the last three noise mapping rounds in the first round we need to make noise maps only for agglomerations which have more of 250,000 inhabitants and major roads which have more of 6 million vehicles per year and major railways which had more of 60,000 vehicles per year but in round two and three we made noise maps for all agglomeration all major roads and major railways now we prepare for the other new noise for the next new new round noise mapping and action planning which will have that line in 2022 for noise mapping and 2024 for action planning if you see in this slide in 2007 we have only nine agglomeration for example and in 2017 we have 20 this difference is because in the first round we made the noise map only for agglomeration which had more of 250,000 inhabitants and now we made the noise maps for all agglomeration next slide please in this slide I present the evolution of authorities which have the responsibility for noise mapping and action planning in last three noise mapping rounds as you can see in some cases the responsibility are different in round two from round two in round one from round two or round three that because in the first round the noise maps and action plans was made for city halls for all noise sources from agglomeration this approach was changed in round two when we put the responsibility for noise mapping and action planning to airport administration for air traffic which are inside agglomeration and also the approach was changed in round three when we put the responsibility for noise mapping and action planning to our national railing company for railway traffic inside agglomeration next round we don't have the intention to change something that means in the next noise mapping round the authority which will have the responsibility to make noise map and action plans will be the same like in round three this this approach was to to to improve our our implementation of the most directive was because in the first round we didn't was prepared to make noise map and action plans and our authorities which make in first round this job don't have don't have in administration all for these noise sources for this reason was very hard for them to make some action plans for something which are not in them administration for example in in inside bohare agglomeration we have one airport and we have also railway traffic but all railways are after our national railway company administration and the airport administration are not under city hall administration and is under minister of transport administration for this reason in 2007 when we was the first round of noise mapping and action planning city hall made a lot of a lot of activities for noise mapping and action plans for some sources which are not in them administration and we improve this this this approach for in the second round and in the third round of of noise mapping okay next slide please in this slide i present to the evolution of who made the noise map and action plans in urmenia the last three rounds if our our legislation responsibilities to to different authorities to make this job but they can make this job using consultants or using the some internal special specialized compartment like noise office for example only our national rail company make noise map and action planning using noise office and other all other authorities make noise maps using external consultants next slide please also in urmenia we had in the past some implementation problems these type of problems more or less are common also in other countries from european union the most important problem are lack of expertise of noise city halls delay to the procurement procedure a fluktation of the staff in the city hall between noise mapping rounds for example in 2020 in some city hall we have some persons which was in charge for noise field activity and after five years this person go in the private to to work and we have other persons in charge which don't have enough expertise to do for this job these type of problems in general are common for city halls we have a good organization inside our national rail company or inside our airport administration which makes noise maps but with city halls it's other it's other type of problems because this fluktation of staff and this delay or budget for the procurement procedures are the main problems in our delays of the noise maps and action plans this main problems generally lead to delay in the developer in the development of strategic noise mapping action plan or in the delivery of lower quality of noise map because the city halls do not have the necessary details to make a request to the consultant or on the quality of this noise map so this type of problem can be solved only by delay by develop a good cooperation with local authorities to provide them guidelines and information by making them aware of the importance of reducing the noise in agglomeration and localities in the other localities in general next slide please in future in Romania we need to develop new guidelines regarding noise mapping and action planning also our authority which are in charge of noise mapping need to make the noise maps using Norseview method now a hard job because for some cases new input data are needed for example for road traffic noise mapping more types of vegetables need to be taken into account and our national rail company for this reason need to to develop a new database regarding the number of vehicles and type of types of vehicles which are needed for noise mapping also the environmental authorities need to have some tools in order to check if consultants for example which make noise maps use the Norseview methods and no other method because like I say in the previous slides the staff of the city hall not have a a good expertise in Norseview and they need to know very exactly how they can check if consultants make a good quality job and for that we need to provide some guidelines in order to help them to to fulfill this this job also in action planning for next round we need to have a correlation of noise reduction measurements with the data provided by the those effect relations from the new 1x3 of environmental noise director this type of correlation didn't was in the previous action plans this is will be a new job for for them and our estimation is also the city hall will have problem to to put in application this 1x3 we need very clear to to show them how they need to to to fulfill fulfill this this content of 1x3 also next noise mapping round we need to put in accordance the noise maps and the right areas with inspired directive requirements the inspired directive is the new other european directive which put member space to make available all the environmental data to the public using the tools provided by the european union geoportals in order to to make our noise maps and our quiet areas in in a format which are compliant with inspired directive we need also to guide guide our local authorities especially in order to for them to know very clear which information and which type of data they need to provide in order to fulfill also the inspired directive uh also now we taking frustration in Romania to define some quiet areas in open country until now we have in our legislation an approach regarding the quiet areas in uh site evaluation but regarding the quiet areas in open country we didn't have until now some approach and we want to in the future modification of our law to have some approach in order to establish some quiet area in open country all the data are new jobs for our this reason the next round of noise maps and action plans we estimate will be more difficult to put in application uh next slide please in conclusion implementation of environmental directive represents a lot of things which our authorities need to make noise maps using most of the method action plans using using uh those effect relations uh provide noise maps and quiet areas in uh inspired format develop tools in order to make accessible of them uh by the population using european union geoportals all these things are new uh we didn't make this job in the past in the first three noise mapping grounds and for this reason a continuous preparation of the authorities for the noise mapping protection plan is needed and a continuous harmonization of the legislation taking into consideration the gaps which we detect during the implementation of environmental noise directive need to take into consideration in our legislation also in order to prevent the future infringement from the european union uh continuous follow up of the delays in making noise maps and action plans and uh speeding up the actions of completion of them is needed um we have this uh this uh this uh we have in 2018 uh uh infringement for delays of uh make our action plans and we saw how how how is to to to solve this problem in order to close this type of infringement for all this reason our recommendation is that the environmental authorities in your country which will develop the necessary legislation for noise mapping and action planning and the authorities uh responsible to make the noise mapping and action planning uh need to collaborate which with each other to solve easier the problems that uh generally occurring the implementation of environmental noise directive with especially without uh collaboration between uh environmental authorities and the city halls will be very hard to put in application uh to have a good application of environmental noise directive next slide thank you for your attention thank you for this excellent presentation i found it very interesting particularly taking into account that Bosnia and Herzegovina is uh preparing for joining the european union it is quite interesting to hear experiences from romania starting from 2007 until now where you have uh been improving the process of mapping and action plan development in a way it is a very nice example for participants on the working group particularly when incorporating certain measures to have a feeling where we should start from taking into account that our institutional capacities are not at satisfactory level either when it comes to noise management throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and i dare to say the public is not sufficiently aware about the noise effects and now we have finished all presentations that we have planned to here today and now we are in the section for panel discussion melina melina please i have to interrupt you we have another presentation by mrs. Johansson oh i have not noted this down i apologize Boris love thank you for interrupting me we have another part of presentation by mrs. Lisa please take the floor thank you uh yes thank you uh i will continue this presentation with going more into detail about the environmental noise directive and what it contains and what kind of work that needs to be done to fulfill uh what is in the directive and you can change slide please this is the same slide as i ended my first presentation with uh it's a summary of the end and what it contains that is that you need to do calculations of environmental noise and how many that are exposed to environmental noise and action plans on how to reduce the noise and you can also see the limits for when the end applies and as you can see it's not just the really big cities that are involved but rather medium-sized cities and above with more than 100 000 inhabitants and then there are also major roads and major major railways and airports that are a part of the end in 2017 the end covered one 511 urban areas across the EU territory 420 000 kilometers of major road 50 000 kilometers of major railways and 89 major airports so it's quite a large task that is being done in the EU every five years of mapping these cities and the infrastructure you can change the slide before we go into more detail about the end i want to mention the noise indicators that we are using and they have been mentioned before today and i thought we could just define what they what they what they mean the noise mapping should report the LDM level which is the day evening and night level and also the night level at night the LDM is a year averaged equivalent noise level where the noise level at night has a penalty of 10 db and this is because people tend to be more sensitive to noise disturbances at night and the noise level on evenings also have a penalty but only 5 db and the time intervals for the evening period and the night period can vary between countries but it's often the ones that i show on these slides in some countries they have postponed the evening and the night one hour but they should always be four hours of evening and eight hours of night but the night can start at 11 o'clock instead of 10 o'clock and then there is the night level which is the equivalent level without any penalties for eight hours of night often from 10 p.m. LDM night is often used also to estimate the risk of sleep disturbances there are other noise indicators used throughout europe like the 24-hour equivalent level without any penalties and in some cases also the l max is used which is the maximum noise level during a certain specific period of time the l max is most commonly used for industrial noise but also in some cases for estimating sleep disturbances with indoor noise there are also different ways to calculate or estimate the negative health effects such as annoyance sleep disturbance and risk increased risk of heart disease one way to do that is to calculate the cost for society for different kinds of negative health effects that cost can then be used for a cost benefit analysis for different noise reduction measures and in the next round of noise mapping according to the end the member states should also report a cost of the negative health effects for the first time one other indicator that can be used it's dailies and daily is an abbreviation for disability adjusted life years and that includes both life years lost due to premature deaths due to disease and also life years affected by disease such as high blood pressure or disability such as hearing loss and the swedish transport administration did an estimation of dailies due to noise a few years ago in sweden and calculated it to be about 40 000 dailies per year and that includes about 500 premature deaths per year and that can be correlated to the population in sweden which is about 10 million people within the eu it is estimated that noise leads to about 450 000 dailies per year due to high annoyance alone and the same amount for sleep disturbance and then about 150 000 dailies per year due to ischemic heart disease so adding these numbers up for the whole eu region it tends to be quite high figures showing that the noise is in fact major significant source for negative health you can change slide the environmental noise direction can directive it can be seen as part of a noise reduction toolbox we have regulations for noise sources on the eu level and those can also be complemented with national policy then there are instruments that can be used in planning and abating noise in exposed areas it can be noise regulations in national planning policies and also regulations in environmental permits for activities or industries that emit noise and finally to know where to make measures and to evaluate if measures have taken heaven have had an effect there is the noise mapping and the following action plans and if you work with these tools the result should be in a reduction in the number of exposed people exposed to noise and as such following a reduction of the negative health effects which leads to lower costs for society but also of course a possibility of higher quality of life for those affected can change slide please as i said the e and d consists of one part that is the noise mapping and one part that is the action plans and you can boil that down to finding the answer to questions how big is the problem and what should we do about it the noise maps seem to get uh often get attention in media the cities like to go out and present the noise maps when they are finished and some cities are also making them available on the city website the action plan usually doesn't get the same attention but in fact it's the action plan that in many ways can be considered to be more important because there is where you decide what to do to actually reduce the noise the future noise exposure is very much depending on the ambition level of the action plan and which i will talk about a bit later the e and d doesn't really say anything about what you should do to reduce environmental noise or what actions that should be taken only that you should have an action plan and then it is up to the parties responsible to fill the action plan with effective measures next slide and here is a flow chart that shows the different parts of the e and d taken by from a report by the european environmental agency about noise in europe it's a very good report to read if you are interested in these questions and i think shallota also showed the same picture earlier today here you can see the flow chart and what that should be done according to the e and d in the first years which sources that should be mapped the major roads the major railways airports and the agglomerations and what steps that needs to be taken you need to collect the data you need to do a noise modeling and validation of that model and you need to determine the population and building exposure after that you should report the results from the noise mapping as noise contours and also tables with how many people that are exposed in different sound level intervals and after that is the next step of developing the action plan where you need to identify where do we have the hotspots where do we have the most exposed do we have areas of other kinds that needs to be treated in some kind we have schools and preschool yards you have recreational areas etc and this process will repeat itself so when you are finished with the noise mapping you will do the action plan and when the action plan is done you can start working with the next round of noise mapping and you might also yeah you can change slightly please the first step that should be taken even before beginning working with the e and d is to decide which parties on what levels that should be responsible for different activities and here you need to look at how the nation with its entities regions and cities are organized how is the responsibility best distributed among the stakeholders you might also want to consider if the result of the noise mapping can have other uses if you are doing this large scale calculations can you for example use them in planning purposes as well synergies with other uses will make them work more efficient and you also need to think if you are already doing parts that is required for the e and d for example if you have a program for noise abatement around the the major roads already next slide the things you need to consider when organizing the work in the e and d is who holds the data necessary for doing noise mapping like the information on traffic intensity on the roads and who holds maps and these data with buildings and terrain and these are parties that you need to evolve early in the process to do the noise mapping and then there is the question on who has use of the results noise mapping is a large prop project and as I said it can be gained by using the results for more than just reporting to the EU noise mapping over a city can be used for planning for example for the action plan it is also of outmost importance to think through which stakeholders have the legal and factual right to do a certain measure some measures can be done by national or city administrations but for others you need to cooperate with private companies or private homeowners and finally you should also consider how to share the knowledge among the parties working with the in one way or another especially since this is a project that returns every five years it is important to gather experience and to improve the work going on to the next phase making it easier and getting results with higher quality for this you will probably want to have some kind of cooperation between national and the local administrations and also with accusations and other experts in for example environmental medicine next slide as an example I have tried to summarize how the responsibilities for the END is distributed in sweden on the national level we have the environmental protection agency where is where I work and we have the responsibility to collect the results from noise mapping and the action plans and then reporting them to the EU and we also share a national network where the parties involved in the END meet and share knowledge and information on a regular basis and we are also taking part in the EU working groups concerning the END then also on the national level we have the national transport administration and they own and manage this national roads and railroads and are responsible for noise mapping and action plans for those and together with the national airport company they also produce noise maps and action plans for the major airports on the regional level we have one public transport company with railway lines lines that exceeds 30 000 trains per year so they are also included in the END work and then there are the municipalities with more than 100 000 inhabitants and that is what we count as an agglomeration in the END directive A city as it is perceived can consist of several municipalities and this leads to that the noise map can be a bit at least perceived as incomplete if we look at the capital area of Stockholm it consists of more than 10 different municipalities and only two of them had more than 100 000 inhabitants and were in the latest round of noise mapping so there are gaps in the noise maps if you look at the Stockholm area and here you might argue that it could have been a better representation if we had had a different definition of agglomeration but on the other hand it comes back to who has the factual and legal rights to do noise measures and that lies very heavily on the municipalities and getting several municipalities to agree on how to prioritize and finance noise reducing measures would probably not have been very effective but that is a decision you have to make when you are organizing the work in the END. Next slide. When you have pinpointed who are the responsible parties those parties needs to start organizing the noise mapping itself and to do this you need to have an understanding of what is needed for large scale noise calculations. The EEU have decided on what which calculation models to use it is called Knossos and they have modules for road, rail, industry and aircraft noise. This image shows primarily the data needed for road noise calculations and to begin with you need the data on the sources that is the roads themselves. You need the geographic data of the roads where they go with their location and their heights in some kind of digital format. You also need to know how many vehicles per day or per year that passes on the road and how they are just distributed during the day, evening and night so you can calculate the LVM value. You also need to know the distribution of different vehicle types, how many cars and trucks and buses that go on the road and you need to know the speed of the road which most often we use the speed limit. And finally you can also need some knowledge of what type of road it is, what is the road surface and how many lanes there are and in some cases this it could be good to have very detailed data about this but in other cases you can probably do assumptions and estimations. Then since it takes time to do measurement of traffic flows it is important to start the inventory of existing data early so you need to know if you need to do new measurements of traffic flows before starting the noise mapping. And for the calculations you also need geographical data on the environment. You need the terrain heights, you need information on ground types, buildings and noise screens there that is the major part of doing noise calculations. You might also want to add vegetation but it's not necessary because the damping effect of vegetation is not as high as many might think. And finally there is the weather. Sound propagation is greatly affected by weather but in these types of calculation we almost always use a pre-decided standard weather to simplify the calculation and to make it possible to reproduce them. And since the noise indicator LDM is a year average value the temporal difference in noise level due to that weather is evened out. So you don't need specific local weather data for doing this calculation but you can use some more broader scale weather data. And finally for calculating the numbers of exposed you need population data in some kind. And having gathered all this data what you do then or what the consultant will do is to build a geographical model in a computer and start with the calculations and the result will be counter lines like in the image on the top right where you can see the colored areas with around the traffic the roads with traffic and where each colored area corresponds to five decibel intervals. And you can also get the tables with numbers of exposed inhabitants in different sound level intervals like the table in the lower right. Next slide. When you gather the data you need to take time to ensure that the quality of the coverage is as good as you like because that will greatly affect the results. If there are gaps in the geographical data you need to have time to fill those gaps before the noise mapping starts. And as I said some data you can use assumptions and the estimations instead of specific data on the local site. But where there are others other data that you really want to have quite a good quality without the end result being too badly affected. And the EU have published a good practice guide for noise mapping that covers quite a lot of how you should think about the quality of data and which assumptions that are possible to use to simplify this process. Noise screens is a very important data to include in the calculations since they are often placed in the areas with the highest exposure. And not adding them will exaggerate the numbers of exposed and adding them but overestimating their effect will underestimate the numbers of exposed. And it's our experience in Sweden that noise screens are not always included in your geographical maps that we use for noise calculations. And if they are they're often just included as a line and there are no information on the height of the screens. So in many cases the noise screens had to be visually inspected which takes quite a lot of time. And for population data in some parts you might have the population data linked to certain buildings and that is of course a very good quality of data. But in other areas you might have the population in a larger area and you want to use the distribution with number of people per square kilometers. Or you might want to distribute it based on the building size. There are different ways to go here depending on what the level of detail of the data that you have available. Next slide. For railroad the sound sources differ a bit from road noise. The noise emission from different kinds of road vehicles are included in the calculation models. But for train models that database of vehicles is not as extensive as it is for road vehicles. And you might have national train types that are missing in the databases. So before starting noise calculations you need to do an inventory of the more common train types in your area and see if there are types that need to be measured before starting the noise mapping. And for trains there are several sound sources at each train which corresponds to the engine, the connection between the rail and the wheels, the brakes and also aerodynamic noise from the train body itself. And you need to measure each train at different speeds. So it takes quite a lot of work to decide the noise emission of a train. So this is something that you also need to start with early. For railroad noise calculations you need to know the geographical data of course and the speed limits just like for roads. But you also need to know about rail roughness, the maintenance of the rails and also if there are bridges and switches because they will greatly affect the noise emission. Otherwise there is more or less the same data needed as for road noise calculations. Next slide. For airports the data gathering is often a more simpler task than for road and railroad because the traffic to major airports are usually well documented. And near the airports the aircraft follows certain tracks making it fairly easy to distribute the annual traffic on the runways and the tracks for the specific airports. And then there are also international databases with noise emission data for common aircraft that can be used for noise mapping. So what you often do is that you group if you have 10 aircrafts with a similar noise emission you group them and you put the same noise emission on all of them and then you use that as data for the calculations. So that is often a simpler and simpler project than doing road and rail calculations. Next slide. And finally we have the noise from major industries which should be included in the noise map for agglomerations and in industries it can also be ports and harbors. And industries are the most diverse of the major sound sources. It's easy to say that every industry has a unique noise emission. So it's not realistic to do detailed noise emission measurements for all industries within a city. So what you can do instead is to look at noise regulations in general and also the environmental permits that the industries hold and assume that all industries emit as much noise as they are allowed to do. It could be of interest to know if a certain industry have working hours or time restrictions that prohibits them from working at night since the nighttime level is quite heavily affects the LDM. But otherwise it's probably easiest to use some kind of estimations for the industrial noise because as I said making measurements at each site is not a realistic task to do. Next slide. And this is just a short summary of what I've said about data gathering. It's important to put time and effort in doing this phase because it will greatly affect the outcome of the noise mapping and the quality of noise mapping and what you can use the noise maps for in later stages. And probably you will start doing this the first round and you will learn a lot and then you will start improving it to the next round etc. Because this is definitely a work in progress and you will learn as you are doing it what data you have and where you need to put efforts to improve the data etc. But it will take time. Next slide. When the data is available the next phase is the actual calculations of noise. I will not say so much about that because the calculations are most often made with commercial software. There are a couple of those available on the market and the large softwares have been adapted for E&D noise mapping. They have certain modules that will simplify noise calculations for large areas. And it is my recommendation here that the noise calculations are done by consultants or other parties that have experience with working with noise calculations. You should know that the calculations require quite a lot of computer power. It's probably best to do them on a dedicated server or a network of computers. And if consultants are doing the calculations it is important to think through the contract with the consultants. And that is a typical area where the city is doing noise mapping could benefit. I want to stress again on the importance of that data gathering and the quality of control of data. Also to think if the noise map have other uses. And before starting the noise mapping a whole agglomeration or a large sections of roads for the first time I also strongly recommend that you do test runs for smaller areas. Just to see how the process are going and where the problems might arise. To improve the quality of the results you might also want to do control measurements in certain places to validate the model. And while you are doing the noise mapping also try to document the process as best as you can and try to learn as much as you can to simplify the next round. Next slide. Now I just want to talk a bit about the action plans where the actual work is being done. As I said earlier the END doesn't specify what actions you should take to reduce noise exposure but it does say what an action plan should include. And it gives a framework for the process of developing an action plan and that is the points on this slide and also the next slide where it says that the action plan should have a description of the agglomeration or the road or what it is that it's describing. Description of authorities if you have limit values, a summary of the results of the noise mapping etc. And it also should include a record of public consultation but it's because that is a part of developing a noise action plan is that the public should in some kind be consulted and be able to come with input to what the action plan should include. Next slide. This is just a continuing on what the END says about the framework for the action plan. There should be a description of the measures that are already being taken and the ones that you are planning. It should include financial information, some budgets and cost effectiveness, cost benefit assessments etc. And it should also contain estimations in terms of the reduction of number of people affected so that you can follow up and see do you did this action really get the result that we wanted. Next slide. You have rather free hands to form the actions you find suitable for your area but the actions that could be considered are actions concerning traffic planning like can we reduce the speed limit on a section of a road to reduce noise? Can we have some kind of regulations like forbidding nighttime traffic in a certain area for example? Of course the planning of new roads and planning of new residential areas is an important part. You can have technical measures at the sound sources like changing road surfaces or noise abatement at industries. Selection of quieter sources like buying buses that go on electricity instead of fuel will reduce noise in city areas. You can have actions which is the reduction of sound transmission for noise screens for example and also vegetation in some kind but as I said vegetation doesn't really give as much result as you might want to but there are often other benefits with vegetation so which you can add to noise reduction so they can anyway be a good measure to do. And then you can have some kind of incentives for for example for homeowners to change windows or other kind of incentives to make other parties do measures to reduce noise. Next slide. I have an example from one of the cities in Sweden that is included in the ENG. It's a city of Umeå. It's a town in the northern Sweden, the pretty town, famous for its many birch trees. Umeå has about 130 000 inhabitants. It's a growing city. It has a university and a big hospital and an airport rather close to town and there are major roads and railways near the city and there are also industrial areas near to the city. And the noise mapping shows that about 40 000 of the inhabitants are exposed to road and rail noise over 55 DBA LDL. Next slide. This slide just shows you the noise map of Umeå where you can clearly see the major roads going through the city. This is also a map that is available on the city website so you can zoom in and look at your street and see what noise levels you are exposed to if you want to. And on the city website you can also find the action plan which you can see at the right of that is an action plan that has been approved by the city council and it covers the period from 2019 to 2023. Next slide. The action plan of Umeå consists of actions targeting 11 different areas. Most actions are to reduce noise in and near dwellings but there are also actions to reduce noise at schools and preschools and to improve sound quality in parks and recreational areas. Some actions are focused on doing specific abatement measures like building noise screens while others are more strategical like the one about increasing sustainable travel. Next slide. All actions are described in detail in a table and this is one example from that table about reducing noise in school yards. And here you can see that in this table you describe the action, what they want to do, what benefits that will be gained, what resources are needed both in staff and money, but part of the city administration that is responsible and a time table for when the action should be finished. And this kind of presentation makes it very clear what the city aims to do and it makes it also rather easy to evaluate how the action is progressing if they will finish in time and what it will cost. Next slide. This is another part of the action plan that I thought I would show you. It's about parks and recreation areas. And here the city have used the noise map to identify which parks that are exposed to noise and they have put up a local guideline value as a criteria saying that a park is noise exposed if it has more than 55 DBA at more than half of the area of the park. And so the red areas in this map are the parks that doesn't fulfill that guideline value and that is the areas that the city will prioritize measures to reduce noise. And you can also use this kind of presentation to highlight where the areas with that already have a good soundscape and then take measures to preserve those areas and make them more accessible to the public. That is another kind of action that you might want to do for recreation and parks. And next slide. The last action I want to lift as an example is programs with financial incentives for home and real estate owners to improve sound insulation of windows. In almost every home the windows are the weak spot when it comes to sound insulation and improving the windows will have a significant positive effect for noise level indoors, reducing the risk of negative health effects. Often you can improve the sound insulation of existing windows by adding extra glazing so you don't need to change the whole window. Depending on the condition of the window the extra glazing can reduce noise indoors with up to 10 dB. So you can get quite a lot of improvement with a fairly simple measure. This action is done by the city deciding which home owners should receive financial aid for improving sound insulation. Usually they target those with the highest noise exposure. The work of improving the windows is done by the home owner himself or by a contractor but the home owner higher and then they get some kind of financial aid from the city. You should of course have some kind of control that the action has been done correctly by visual inspection or measurements but if it's done okay the city will pay most of the cost for extra glazing and exactly how much if it's like 75% or 90% you can decide for each city. And you should also be aware that improved sound insulation by extra glazing of this kind will also have positive effects on energy consumption so it's a bonus for this kind of action. And this is a typical action where it's outside the city's factual and legal right to do something at the buildings but then they can use other incentives to make homeowners do something about the buildings. So finally my last slide I'm just going to mention something thank you about health costs. In the next round of noise mapping according to the E&D the member states should report not only how many are exposed to noise but also the cost of the following health effects. And formulas for calculating health effects are based on the studies presented by the WHO guidelines for the European region which came in 2018 which also Charlotte mentioned. The detail concerning these calculations has not been completely set as far as I'm aware and there are still some ongoing discussions. But it's well it could be interesting to know that that kind of calculations will be added to the E&D. And that is all I had to present and thank you very much for listening and so we move on to the next part of the workshop. Thank you. Oh Lisa. Thank you Lisa for your interesting very interesting presentation. I will immediately move to the next section of our agenda these being panel discussions where we have posted many questions already. Some of these questions I myself prepared and I believe that this will be beneficial for all of us to clearly understand this matter and for better strategic planning when it comes to the issue of noise. I will start from the issue that and question that has been received first in our Q&A section. It relates to religious facilities. Participant is interested to hear whether there are any researchers said of the topic of noise coming from religious facilities, religious buildings, so mosques and churches which at certain parts of the day produce a sound to inform believers about prayer time and about the noise from catering facilities in residential areas. So the question relates to religious facilities and coffee bars in city and residential areas. We can start with Lisa to try to respond to this question. I'm not aware of any studies about actual health effects from this kind of of noise sources. I don't know if Charlotte might have more information on that. In what I do know in Sweden we have some it's not a general and not general regulations but in in some cases there have been local regulations that are there either to reduce the noise level or just to have them at specific times. So it's okay to have church bells or mosques sounding during daytime but not during nighttime for example. I know there are church bells that have had to know whether there are noise from the bells during night for example. So that kind of regulations but not in general. I'm not sure if Charlotte or Victor would like to say something whether they have had some experiences in regards to this question. If not we can move to the next question. This question concerns also the noise from catering facilities from bars etc. This is for the reason that in Bosnia and Herzegovina the issue of noise is mostly percepted as a noise from religious facilities. So our question is related that these catering facilities are usually opened in the residential buildings in the ground floors and they create noise. So do you have any examples from your respective countries how is this dealt with? Perhaps the question for Lisa or Victor if you can say something. Yes for like restaurants and bars and such we have usually they don't they're not allowed to serve alcohol too late at night that is what was but they also most often used to to make the the bar closed at a certain hour and then we also have national guideline values for noise indoors. So if you have an activity it doesn't really matter what kind of activity it is but if you that activity creates too loud noise indoors with closed windows etc then you need to do some kind of reducing measures which is most often that they have to close at a certain time most of the 10 o'clock pm that you don't you can't have too loud activities after that hours even in residential areas. Regarding this question in Romania we have 50 decibels outdoor and 45 decibels indoor and this type of regulation are in a field of control of the city halls. We have also in Romania a problem with catering or restaurants which are in the in the buildings residents and but we have this legislation and city halls need to make this type of control when population have reclamation. I understand the question is also for some religious facilities or only for restaurants. Okay regarding religion facilities we don't have any regulation for noise. Very well I would like to move to the next question we have two questions in fact that are similar according to the action plans who is authorized to implement recovery measures when it comes to transport industry airports and railways and how can you ensure these means and the other question is similar after the law is adopted in a country whether changes amendments to the roads construction are permitted so changes to the existing infrastructure is it allowed I hope that these questions were clear we can start from Lisa again if she'd like to say something implements recovery measures and how are the funds obtained Yes well that this way come back to if party has the factual and legal rights to do measures and I would guess that it is quite similar in different countries you have a certain party that is still responsible for the noise source itself the road owner or the railway owner which could be a national administration or a regional administration or a local municipality and therefore the actions should be at that party so if for example if the national road administration are the ones that owns and maintains the roads they are also the ones that should do the action plans do the noise mapping and should do the noise measures and fund the noise measures so that it's a polluter pay principle that the ones that are responsible for the noise are the ones that should do the actions and therefore it could be difficult for example if when it's a city or agglomeration doing noise maps and action plans they can't really well they can have some limited availability to industries for example so the city can't go up to an industry and build a noise screen but they have so they have to work with other kind of measures like financially incentives or other kind of regulations to do that kind of measures so you really need to see how the responsibility for the noise source itself are how they are distributed within the country but for the main noise sources which is the infrastructure it's usually the one that owns and maintains the road or a way that that will do the noise measurement the noise reduction measures themselves and as for the question about doing changes that is of course possible and then it is of course good to have some kind of national or regional regulation on what kind of noise levels should you aim for when you do changes you can often have a bit higher ambition level when you are doing actual changes in the infrastructure rather when you just have the same conditions that has been for 50 hundred years so when you're rebuilding a road or building a new road you can use that possibility to also build noise screens and do improvements on buildings around the roads etc. It would be interesting to hear from Victor in Romania who covers the cost of recovery of improvements or some other infrastructural undertakens that have been included in the action plan. Like you like I say in my presentation we in the past needed to solve some gaps when I present in my slides some governmental decision which we made in 2020-2008 in 2016 these gaps was improved because like I mentioned in my presentation in 2005 when we ensured the first transposition of and we didn't identify very well the authorities which are responsible to make noise map to make action plan and to put in an application of noise apartment measurements which are in the action plans and for this reason for example in 2007 when we make the first round of noise mapping our city halls make noise map and action plan for all noise sources but after that we changed its approach and we put the authority which have in administration the noise sources to make noise map action plan and to put in application noise apartment measures for example our national road company if they have the responsibility to make noise map action plan and to put in application noise management apartment for all major roads which are in administration of this company if we have major roads which are in administration for example city halls or other local authorities this authority have the responsibility to make noise map action plan and to put in application noise reductions measures this is an approach you cannot put to make this noise reduction to put to other authorities you need to put to the owner of the noise sources we make this mistake in 2005 before we become member state and in 2007 when we made the first noise maps we didn't prepare for this job for this reason yes and we change all the registrations step by step in order to harmonize all these gaps to solve not to harmonize to solve all these gaps and in our country our authorities which make noise maps action plan and put in application noise reduction measures are the authorities which have in administration the noise source this is the better approach other approach it is it is a better but i don't understand the second question the second question i don't understand it concerns the question who is paying for the measures to reduce noise that was the point and i just wanted to confirm this you already answered this question now we can continue one question which has been frequently asked in Bosnia and Herzegovina and which may be a problem in the future and it has been in relation with illegally constructed facilities with in the vicinity of the source of noise but modeling did not recommend the construction of residential facility in that area and very often they do build buildings but then they complain about the noise this has been a very often uh phenomenon Bosnia and Herzegovina i don't know whether you had such situations in Romania or elsewhere Victor were there any cases that uh there were some illegally constructed residential buildings in the vicinity of the source of noise and then the inhabitants would later on complain and claim their rights from the authorities do you understand the question yes okay in Romania we've had in the past and we have also now some of this problem but in the new legislation in 2019 we put the obligation for the city hall to to take into consideration the noise maps and noise limit in when they develop the urban urbanization of the city and because they now have this obligation usually they didn't have the permit to to to make some residential building in the locations which are with with noise problem most road traffic traffic but also you know in Romania we are in the beginning of this process but we put in our legislation and we we find a solution in order to to to solve this problem thank you let's move to the next question we have received multiple questions and i don't know if we will be able to answer all of them within the time we are given but if that's not the case we will respond in writing the question uh do you have any sanctions penalties and what is the amount of these sanctions for violations of noise limitations during the day for instance from railroad railways or industry if you have prescribed threshold limit values just please explain what is the penalty regime perhaps Lisa if you could share with us your experience first sorry my my my mobile is a bit did you hear the yes i heard the i heard the question i just couldn't put the sound on we in sweden at least we don't have any penalties like fines or something if you if you exceed the threshold values what what can happen is that you will have to final some kind of measures to reduce noise and that is can of course be very expensive or it can be rather cheap depending on situations but we don't have any standardized fines for for exceeding the values we have in sweden we don't have uh we don't use limit values as much as guideline values which means that they can often be exceeded a bit without having to to without having to do anything so it's a bit of a rubber band value uh that we're using that's very interesting victor in romanian what's your experience we have fragile values and the the the the responsibility of the authorities to to find some solution in order to reduce the noise we don't have penalty but also we have now we work on the new new legislation for noise limits and noise treasure values and we have we maybe we will have some some approach you got into use noise limits only when the others don't exist solution in order to reduce noise and we will use this nice limit in order to to only for indoor not only to assure the noise limits inside the the the residential inside the dream but for outside we used pressure values and not penalties we make the obligation in the law for for the administration of the noise source to find the solution in order to reduce the noise and perhaps one related question is uh related to monitoring how do you monitor noise in accordance with the action plan and how good is the implementation of the action plan and who is responsible for monitoring of noise and who is funding the monitoring of noise perhaps lisa or victor again what are your experience and well we have uh it's the same the same party that is doing the noise mapping and doing the action plans that are also responsible for following up the results of the actual plans so we don't have a different administration or something that monitors and follows up the noise so it's done by themselves yes how do you carry out monitoring once a year or on a monthly basis or so perhaps victor you can you can explain this on your example we have okay the noise source and the authority which having an administration the noise source have the obligation to put in application the action plan but we have uh some responsibility for our environmental agency in order to see if the noise reduction measures which are put in this action plan are put in application and if uh are not put in application we need uh uh uh uh to the the local authority for example need to to put in the uh future action plan the reason why they don't put in application the noise reduction measure which was established in the in the past and uh uh which deadline they will have in order to put in application this nice reduction measure uh our uh local agency have this responsibility to to to monitoring which uh which uh noise reduction measures are put in application and which are not put in application which are was mentioned in the action plan thank you very much for your answer and now we have come to the end of our webinar I would kindly ask you to stay with us for other 10 minutes to answer try to answer some questions these uh answers are very crucial for us because we are at the beginning in a very early phase of our efforts to transpose the directive so your experience is crucial we had several questions I will sum them up Charlotte referred repeatedly in her presentation previously conducted studies on effects of noise in educational facilities on the health of children and people employed there uh Charlotte referred to this but uh it would perhaps be interesting to hear what are the measures the common measures you apply in these educational facilities which help uh uh protecting the health of children yes maybe I can start uh I guess there are many things that you can do to protect the children from excessive noise levels I guess you can see that there are exposure from the outside from the traffic or industrial plants or other activities coming from the outside and then of course it is important to have proper insulation of the buildings and good windows etc that we have talked about and if possible at least parts of the schoolyard should also be shielded from excessive noise to ensure that the children can play outside and get enough restoration and physical activity that they need to perform in the schools there are also sounds from the activities going on within the the school and there you can work with the acoustics in the room and yeah reduce noise from any types of equipment and place some yeah other materials on tables and chairs for example to reduce the overall noise both from the children and the activities themselves and also from from the outside thank you thank you very much for this answer very interesting as a very interesting example how we can protect our children in school now I scrolled through these questions to see if there are some more interesting questions question from Amar I will try to translate it how close does the Institute Karolinskaya work with the government on the issue of negative impact of noise on health and do they have any advisory role and is the government funding research activities that will help them to better understand the adverse effects of noise on health that was the question for Charlotte yes thank you and yes the Karolinskaya Institute is both a traditional research institution with different research areas covered but we are also at least the institutes where I work the Institute of Environmental Medicine we are also a national agency for environmental and health issues so in that sense we are kind of advisory board and two different agencies and the public in many aspects and we do get involved in a lot of assignments regarding health risk assessments on noise so we're often interacting with the national agencies and other authorities in these matters and try to advise what are the best ways to avoid impacts on public health from noise exposure so we have a lot of exchange both naturally and originally within Sweden and also with regards to EU and WHO yes I will use an opportunity to ask for ask another question which obtains to judicial proceedings are have there been any judicial proceedings launched based on allegations on of the effect of noise by group of citizens or who complained that their health deteriorated as a result of exposure to noise I don't know who can answer this question whoever perhaps Lisa for the start and then Victor if you have some examples to share yes we have quite a lot of examples where people have complained about noise and taking it to environmental court and wanting to have some kind of measures being made and it's we have examples for from all kind of noise sources road rail and industrial and football soccer plans and aircraft airports and almost anything you might think of and we have quite a worked out legal preferences for when they when they can have measures done or not so that is quite well worked out in the legal system one example which I think is very interesting is concerning aircraft noise around our land which is the biggest airport in Sweden when they wanted a new environmental permit there was this organization of neighbors in the surrounding areas that went together and demanded that the project that the airport wanted to do that they didn't want it because it would be mean too much noise where they lived but if the project were to get the environmental permit they wanted funding to be put aside for research concerning aircraft noise so there is actually a research center at one of the technical universities in Stockholm doing funding research about aircraft noise due to this environmental process and that is I think it's an interesting way to go where you realize well well you you need to you need to do this change need this infrastructure but we can also use the environmental process to get funding for for new research and knowing more about the effects that this kind of noise will have so it's everything from from that rather large scale down to the single homeowner wanting a noise screen outside the garden so it's quite common also in Romania we have a lot of complaints about the regarding noise from restaurant activities for road to traffic railway traffic airports regarding the the major noise sources our approach is to solve these complaints in the in the the authorities make the action plans in order to find a solution to solve these complaints because also these action plans need to put to public consultation and public can participate to this to this to make to the process of the maker of action plans and then compliance are taken to account regarding the other type of noise sources like restaurants or other small activities this type of our approach is to to to put this the the economic operator to make to find solution in order to solve the problem and usually city halls have this task thank you very much indeed for these detailed answers and now i would like to end this question and answer session but there are still some questions that remain unanswered we will try to answer them in writing may i now thank all the presenters for their excellent presentations i see in our chat box that the participants are extremely happy with today's webinar and that they find found it useful i should only say now that in late this month we will have the third round of the meetings of the working groups and members of the institutions and consultancies are also encouraged to participate in the these working groups and as we all see there will be a lot of things that have to be done but both by the institutions and the consultancies so the conclusions of this webinar will be very useful to this and now i thank you all very much and i hope that we will have we will be able to have similar webinars within this project thank you very much all and have a nice day have a nice day have a nice day bye bye bye thank you bye