In an innovative approach to tackling noise pollution residents in one of London’s noisiest neighbourhoods have decided to tackle the issue by conducting their own noise mapping surveys. With training and GIS support from Mapping for Change local people have seen real results from this “citizen science” approach.

Background:

The Royal Docks community is situated in the east of the capital and falls within the London borough of Newham and forms part of the Thames Gateway initiative. London City airport was constructed in 1986 and principally serves the financial districts of London. The number of passengers using the airport has risen in consecutive years to 3.3 million in 2008. The increase in airport traffic has impacted the local community who have serious concerns about the levels of noise pollution they are being exposed to. Additionally concerns have been raised due to London City Airport’s planning application to expand the number of flights by 50%, to 120,000 per year.

Project:

Mapping for Change have been collaborating on a new project which uses participatory mapping to help local people monitor changes in their area and become more involved in decision-making processes. Through this programme residents in the Royal Docks were given noise meters and trained in how to collect the data. Residents conducted a cohesive noise pollution mapping survey over a period of seven weeks during which readings were taken at all hours of the day and night across the areas surrounding the airport. Over 500 individual readings were taken across the site. In addition to recording dBA levels, residents also collected qualitative information expressing how they felt about the noise. They were asked to choose words such as relaxing, annoying, or disturbing to describe the sound.

Results:

Residents found disturbingly high levels of noise, with many readings exceeding levels deemed to cause serious annoyance under the World Health Organisation community noise guidelines. These results show that the vast majority of readings were described as Loud, Very Loud or Extremely Loud by residents.  In addition, the measurements gathered by the community revealed a clear correlation between unacceptable levels of noise and the LCA operating hours. One of the residents said “the noise is irritating, I can’t relax or have the window open - but I can’t shut-out the noise so have to turn the TV up - but everything is then so loud.” The results also revealed that individuals are quite accurate in the perception of noise levels (see pdf of qualitative results), suggesting that perhaps people are very reliable noise monitors!

Contrary to the recently published online noise maps found on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs website, which are created using computer-based models of noise samples taken from 2006/07, the results collected reflect actual ambient noise readings.

The results of Royal Docks noise mapping were presented at an open meeting attended by local residents and the Environment Officer for London Borough of Newham. Residents had the opportunity to find out more about how the local authority monitors noise and express some of their concerns.

The project team at Mapping for Change is currently exploring how this noise mapping methodology might be extended to other areas suffering from high levels of noise pollution. In addition to collecting information on cumulative noise missed out by more official methods, this methodology also offers a way of expressing the qualitative aspects of how noise affects people. This pilot study has shown that where people are willing to take part, a straightforward GIS analysis can provide a powerful tool for communities and that locally gathered spatial information is important for a bottom-up approach to tackling planning issues.

Click here to see out short video on the project