Project description
Bending traffic noise to protect our hearing
Road traffic is the most widespread source of environmental noise, with more than 100 million people affected by harmful levels in the European Union. Long-term exposure is known to increase stress and disrupt sleep. The EU-funded WHISSPER project will promote new technology developed by 4Silence, a company based in the Netherlands. Its revolutionary, yet simple and sustainable solution is based on the principle of diffraction – bending traffic noise in an upward direction to reduce horizontal noise. Prototypes tested in the Netherlands have proven highly efficient and easy to implement and maintain. The WHISSPER project will focus on optimising the 4Silence solution and testing it in various operational environments.
Objective
The European expenditure on road and railway amounts ~€ 90 billion per year. Around 6% of the expenditure accounts for noise reduction measures, which equals to €5,43 billion. Despite spending these vast amounts of money, the overall exposure to traffic noise is escalating. Today, more than 1 in 4 Europeans is exposed to traffic noise levels dangerous to their health in their homes, schools and workplaces. The World Health Organization has classified traffic noise as the second worst environmental stressor affecting human health in Europe and the only one that is still growing.
Road and railway authorities recognize the problem, but budgets are limited, and currently available measures are based upon high cost solutions and have issues with life-time, noise reduction levels, and applicability. 4Silence helps to solve the problem. The technology company has invented a highly innovative, but also simple and sustainable solution based on the principle of diffraction, i.e. bending traffic noise in an upward direction in order to obtain horizontal noise reduction. It constitutes a revolutionary approach in the world of noise reduction, which traditionally focuses at noise absorption or blocking noise.
The prototypes are complete and qualified and have been tested in real world settings in the Netherlands. Demonstrations have provided evidence that the solution is highly effective in reducing noise exposure while having far lower cost (~50% cost reduction) and easier implementation and maintenance. This coincides with the increasing need of authorities for more cost-effective noise reduction measures. To ensure complete commercial scalability and enable international acceptance by road and railway authorities across Europe, the 4Silence solution requires optimization and scale up testing in different operational environments. With the support of several leading road and railway authorities, 4Silence aims to use the project set a new standard for traffic noise abatement.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
7524 PK Enschede
Netherlands
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.