2024-10-12 04:00:00
Diagnosis of sound environments in progress using the NoiseCapture application, in Rezé (Loire-Atlantique) in January 2022. THIERRY MEZERETTE / VILLE DE REZE
When Alexander Radi opens the French window of his living room, his gaze is lost in the foliage of a neighboring grove. After the downpour, a clear spell makes you want to enjoy the garden where two hens are cackleing; but they are soon covered by the rumble of a twin-jet which descends on Nantes-Atlantique airport, in the south-west of the metropolis.
Mr. Radi, a 43-year-old engineer, lives in Rezé (Loire-Atlantique), a town of 40,000 inhabitants near the airport, with his partner and two children. He works a lot at home and is exposed to airplane noise several dozen times a day. He blames it on a lack of sleep, “impacts on mood” and difficulty concentrating.
In Rezé as elsewhere, noise pollution represents a major health and economic issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least one million years of healthy life are lost every year in Western Europe due to transport noise. In 2021, a report from the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe) estimated the “social cost” of noise in France at 147 billion euros per year.
Educate public policies
Alexander Radi lives a little outside the area where residents of Nantes-Atlantique airport can qualify, under certain conditions, for financial assistance to soundproof their homes. But he is not completely helpless, thanks to SonoRezé, an initiative launched in 2021 by the town hall and researchers, which aims to better understand the noises of the city to inform public policies, and in which he actively participates.
The volunteer residents first installed the NoiseCapture application on their smartphones, which allows them to record the sounds around them, provide the source and assign a degree of difficulty to them. Each episode is geolocated, which makes it possible to draw up acoustic maps. Residents then focused on the noise of the planes.
Collective measurement of residents of the town of Rezé using the NoiseCapture application, June 1, 2023. CITY OF REZE Screenshot of the NoiseCapture application. On the left, a map of sound episodes recorded using the application. On the right, the measurement and recording interface. NOISECAPTURE
“Today, people with little exposure are not taken into account, but the discomfort starts at a low level”according to Arnaud Can, architect of SonoRezé and research director at the Joint Research Unit in Environmental Acoustics (Gustave-Eiffel University and Center for Studies and Expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Development ). In fact, the regulatory maps which organize noise management near French airports only consider areas where the reference indicator exceeds 55 decibels. However, the WHO recommended in 2018 that the public is not exposed to air traffic noise above 45 decibels.
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