Noise is a set of unpleasant, undesirable sounds. If we look at its socio-economic effects, noise is not only a social nuisance (causing difficulties resting, communication between homes, mental discomfort, harm to people’s health, and even hindering their performance at work), it also has appreciable economic impact (depreciation of the value of land a property, the expense involved in noise protection, losses from workers’ reduced performance). In order to limit and reduce the impact of noise on our cities and infrastructure, we can attack the noise at source (vehicles, industry, people) by means of regulations, but we can also work on the designs of our infrastructure to minimise the impact of noise and find solutions that put people first. Vibration is a similar story.

We can differentiate between two types of projects: those that aim to improve conditions in existing infrastructure — characterising it with noise maps, acting to provide noise protection — or those which, from the design stage, aim to take into account any unavoidable sources of noise and vibration and seek solutions to protect and improve people’s lives.