CNOSSOS-EU:
Common NOise AsseSSment MethOdS in EU
DG ENV / JRC
KICK-OFF MEETING of the
CNOSSOS-EU TECHNICAL COMMITTEE
Brussels, 15-16 November 2010
DRAFT OUTCOME
(Version 1)
Participants: H. Gartner (Austria), R. Ortner (Austria), J. Haberl (Austria), C. Kirisits (Austria), H. Meidl (Austria), J. Michalík (Czech Repubic), P. Junek (Czech Repubic), B. Plovsing (Denmark), P. Maijala (Finland), G. Dutilleux (France), F. Junker (France), L. Schade (Germany), W. Bartolomaeus (Germany), T. Przybilla (Germany), U. Möhler (Germany), T. Werst (Germany), M. Hintzsche (Germany), F; Zacharias (Germany), U. Isermann (Germany), T. Wagner (Germany), W. Pompetzki (Germany), W. Probst (Germany), Christian Popp (Germany), K-G. Krapf (Germany), E. King (Ireland), G. Marsico (Italy), C. Camilleri (Malta), M. van den Berg (Netherlands), R Nota (Netherlands), J. Kielland (Norway), H. Koutsileos (Norway), R. Kucharski (Poland), J. L. Bento Coelho (Portugal), V. Minchevici (Romania), I. Aspuru (Spain), C. Asensio Ribera (Spain), K. Strömmer (Sweden), S. Turner (UK)
W. Franken (EASA), L. Cavadini (Eurocontrol, Int), M. Paviotti (consultant, Italy), P. De Vos (DHV BV, Netherlands), D. Rhodes (CAA, UK), S. Shilton (Acustica, UK), N. Jones (Extrium, UK), C. Damar (ACI-Europe)..
European Commission: T. Verheye (DG ENV), S. Kephalopoulos (JRC/IHCP), F. Anfosso-Lédée (JRC/IHCP)
Apologies: B. Gergely (DG ENV), C. Nugent (EEA), S. Arrowsmith (EASA), R. Kim (WHO), C. Lechner (Austria), K. Vogiatzis (Greece), L. Lombardi (Italy), H. Jonasson (Sweden), Y. Bosworth (UK), L. Mihalci (Slovakia), D. Koutroukides (Cyprus), J. Jakobsen (Denmark), J. Lindmaier (Germany), B. Vogelsang (Germany), V. Uscila (Lithuania), M. Jajcaj (Slovakia), N. van Oosten (Anotech, Spain)
Meeting’s place and time
· Monday 15th November 2010, 9:30 to 17:30, Committee of Regions, room: JDE 70, Bâtiment Jacques Delors, Rue Belliard 99-101, B - 1040 Brussels
· Tuesday 16th November 2010, 9:00 to 17:00, DG REGIO building, room: CSM2 9/146, Avenue de Tervuren 41, B - 1040 Brussels
1. Welcome and introduction (S. Kephalopoulos, JRC)
Mr. Kephalopoulos welcomed the participants and presented the meeting’s agenda. The main points of the agenda were endorsed, however, some modifications were introduced in the course of the meeting in agreement with the participants (see final agenda attached) .
A round table presentation of the participants was then made.
2. The implementing decision in 2011 (content and timeframe) (T. Verheye, DG ENV)
Mr. T. Verheye (DG ENV) opened the meeting. He encouraged the participants to move forward on establishing common noise assessment methods. He recalled about the main decisions taken during the last Noise Regulatory Committee meeting in June 2010. More formal interaction with actors on the ground in the EU MS was felt necessary for reviewing and finalising CNOSSOS-EU, that is, why this CNOSSOS-EU Technical Committee meeting was setup. DG ENV intends to proceed with the review of the END on the basis of the study performed by Milieu to identify missing provisions and other issues that if taken on board will allow for a more efficient implementation of the END, In parallel, the work started on preparing common noise assessment methods in EU for assessing the number of people exposed to noise should be completed and brought into fruition as soon as possible. Mr. Verheye mentioned some commonalities of the noise process with that of air quality and potential benefit that would be gained if synergies among the two communities will be developed. However, in the case of noise, for the time being no accuracy level related to strategic noise maps and also no binding limit values for noise levels are foreseen by the Environmental Noise Directive (END). This might justify a different approach to be followed for the noise file. Mr. Verheye also strongly recommended to reach an agreement as soon as possible on the fit-for-purpose framework of CNOSSOS-EU, and also to prepare a transposition of this methodological framework into a legal text to be used for an implementing decision via Comitology in 2011. This text should be ready for the final vote which is expected to take place around in the 2nd half of 2011.
It is understood that the full testing scheme of CNOSSOS-EU may not be completed in 2011 but there will be space for amending the implementing decision at a later stage in case this will be deemed as necessary. Concerning the text to be included in the implementing decision as this is legislative document that should not be overburdened, it is therefore important to decide upon the parts of the methods that should be described inside the legal text of the implementing decision and those that should be left to the guidelines for the competent use of CNOSSOS-EU or other related docs. Further adaptations and fine-tuning of CNOSSOS-EU, their practical implementation in software and finally their validation can be made at a later stage, after the implementing decision is adopted and certainly in due time for the reporting on the 3rd round of noise mapping by 2017.
Mr. Verheye finally informed the participants that the next Noise Regulatory Committee meeting will take place on 13th December 2010 in Brussels and will be shortly communicated to the EU MS. Another one is planned to be held in May 2011 around the time the preparatory report on the review of the END will be launched for public consultation.
3. CNOSSOS-EU, the roadmap: achievements and future steps (S. Kephalopoulos, JRC)
Mr. Kephalopoulos (JRC) presented the rationale behind the development of CNOSSOS-EU, the factors that contributed to the low comparability of the results of the 1st round of noise mapping and finally, the different steps already taken or still to be taken for finalising and implementing CNOSSOS-EU in Europe. He recalled that the drafting / reviewing process of CNOSSOS-EU consists of two phases: first a preparatory phase from December 2009 to May 2010 in which have been involved more than 150 noise experts which gave rise to the draft JRC Reference Report on CNOSSOS-EU, then the second phase with the formal involvement of the EU MS which started from the Noise Regulatory Committee meeting (11 June 2010, Brussels). He finally presented the remaining tasks to be planned within the CNOSSOS-EU framework before it can be operationalised and implemented in EU MS. These tasks are the following:
- Review and finalisation of the CNOSSOS-EU methodological framework
- Implementation of CNOSSOS-EU in a reference software
- Development of benchmark tests cases for CNOSSOS-EU validation and verification
- Testing/benchmarking of CNOSSOS-EU reference software over a range of test cases
- Preparation of Good Practice Guidelines
- Establishment of a quality framework for collecting and checking input data in relation to the accuracy of the overall assessment
- Conversion and use of national databases in connection with CNOSSOS-EU
- Set up of a EU database of input values associated to CNOSSOS-EU
- Enforcing the use of the EEA’s updated reporting mechanism
- Training of the EU MS for the competent use of CNOSSOS-EU
The participants asked for clarifications about the meaning of the CNOSSOS-EU software, the part of the CNOSSOS-EU framework that will be compulsory to use for strategic noise mapping, and the possibility to handle national specificities. For these points Mr. Kephalopoulos asked the participants to refer to the recommendations made during the ad-hoc meeting with the software developers that was held in Ispra in March 2010 and also to the rest of the documents pertaining to the series of ad hoc meetings and events organised in the period March 2009 to March 2010. All of these documents are available via the DG ENV’s CIRCA website[1]
4. Analysis of the general comments received from the EU MS on the draft JRC Reference report on CNOSSOS-EU following the decisions of the last Noise Regulatory Committee meeting (F. Anfosso, JRC)
Following the decisions of the last meeting of the Noise Regulatory Committee (11th June 2010), the EU MS were asked to sent their comments on the draft JRC reference report on CNOSSOS-EU. Comments were received from ten EU MS, five of them having made general comments related to the process only and the other five having made both, general and specific comments to the technical parts of the draft JRC Reference report. Ms. Anfosso presented the analysis of the general comments. The more specific and detailed comments were inserted embedded in the revised version of the reference report on CNOSSOS-EU that was distributed to the participants before the meeting and can be also downloaded from the CIRCA public website. The analysis of the general comments is also documented in a JRC report that can be also found on CIRCA.
The general comments were compiled by topics and concerned: the process and the principles of CNOSSOS-EU, the necessary levels of details, the implementation (guidelines, software implementation, quality assurance system), the technical issues and needs and finally, some recommendations for further strategic development and implementation.
Some of the comments show wide agreement among the EU MS. However, for some of the topics, conflicted comments were received which will require further discussion during this Technical Committee meeting (and eventually in the meetings of the WGs to be established) before a consensus is reached among the EU MS. Some of the points are even related to the basic foundations of CNOSSOS-EU. The most important critical points identified are related to:
- the two-level approach: most EU MS supported this approach provided that the more complex method for action planning is not mandatory. However, one EU MS (UK) mentioned inconsistency of the two-level approach and highlighted that noise mitigation measures should have an impact on strategic noise maps, which implies that a same assessment method is used at both levels.
- the level of simplifications: some EU MS think that more simplifications could be made on the simplified method whereas others highlighted that the use of default values might bring inconsistencies in the results
- two EU MS supported a totally different methodology than the one used in CNOSSOS-EU for industrial noise (DE and DK) and sound propagation calculation (DE)
- one EU MS (DE) did not support the use of ECAC Doc 29 (3rd edition) for aircraft noise modelling
- a simplified method for strategic noise mapping and a more complex method for action planning was welcomed by some EU MS but also criticized by some others.
Several EU MS requested the EC to define the required accuracy of the results. Furthermore, interesting suggestions on the possible simplifications to be made in the common method for strategic noise mapping were made and will form a strong basis for further discussions before the legal text related to the implementing decision is drafted. Recommendations on implementation strategies and on the long term support and development of CNOSSOS-EU were also welcomed.
5. Guidelines for a competent use of CNOSSOS-EU: objectives, progress (F. Anfosso, JRC)
Ms. Anfosso presented the state of progress of the development of Guidelines for a competent use of CNOSSOS-EU. Up to now, a web-based framework for demo purposes has been set up by a group of 9 experts. Five different levels of use have been defined according to the potential end-user: from the most general level (level 0) intended for the public and politicians to the most detailed level (level 4) intended for technicians performing the noise calculations and the data collection. This web-based tool will allow receiving on-line comments and feedback from the users. During the formal reviewing and finalisation of CNOSSOS-EU, an ad hoc WG will be established to further develop and finalise both the format and content of the guidelines.
Following the presentation, the idea of a web-based guidance was appreciated by the participants, however, concerns about its maintenance were expressed. Mr. Kephalopoulos stated that this maintenance on a long term basis will be organised by JRC together with the maintenance of overall the CNOSSOS-EU framework. At the moment, only the conceptual part of the guidelines and the corresponding website templates were prepared, however all specific info will be filled in, once the detailed description of CNOSSOS-EU will be fixed.
It was, however, clarified that the guidelines will not contain algorithms which are merely intended to be used by software developers.
6. Discussion and agreement on fundamental issues
The discussion aimed at further clarifying and finally reaching preliminary agreement on the aforementioned critical points which were identified by the feedback received from the EU MS in the period August-September 2010. Intense discussions were held during the meeting especially concerning the principle and the need for a two-level approach, the necessary level of accuracy and also the suggested methodology for the calculation of sound propagation in CNOSSOS-EU.
a. The CNOSSOS-EU two-level approach (methodological approach and application)
The two-level approach as a necessary link between strategic noise maps and action plans:
The principle of the two-level approach is supported on one hand by the need of a simplified method for the purpose of strategic noise mapping for which a lower level of accuracy might be acceptable, on the other hand, the need of a more detailed method providing more accurate results for the purpose of action planning. However, as it was mentioned by UK representatives, this two-level methodological framework may lead to inconsistency as, for example, noise mitigation measures may not be properly assessed when applying a methodological framework with a varying degree of complexity and/or simplifications.
It was also mentioned that often, action planning is undertaken wherever noise mapping identifies an area to be of interest, e.g. a quiet zone. In this specific case of a quiet zone, a detailed method is needed because a simplified method may produce results with too large uncertainties.
As to the degree of simplification that should be allowed, it was mentioned that the simplified method should not be too simple, yet some simple methods might be accurate enough to take into account the effects of action planning.
Several views were then expressed by the participants. For some participants, noise mapping at local level could be distinguished from the one to be performed at EU level for strategic noise mapping purposes. It was also proposed as a cost effective measure to perform the strategic noise mapping in two steps: one policy oriented by employing a simple method and the second via a more detailed method to investigate where the actions will be.