The contribution of LIFE+ NADIA project on the implementation of the European Directive on Environmental Noise

NADIA, acronym of Noise Abatement Demonstrative and Innovative Actions and information to the public, was a European Project funded as part of the announcement Life+ 2009 between October 2010 and June 2014. Five Italian partners were involved in the project: two provinces, (Genova, the coordinating beneficiary, and Savona), two municipalities (Vicenza and Prato), and a technical coordinator (CIRIAF/University of Perugia). All the public bodies were obliged to perform the actions required by the Environmental Noise Directive, i.e., noise mappings of major roads for the provinces and of the agglomerations for the municipalities and the consequent noise action plans. The four public bodies, with the support of the research centre, decided to go beyond the mandatory requirements of END in order to achieve the following main objectives: (i) to improve the methodologies for the realization of noisemappings and action plans, with a particular focus on road traffic noise; (ii) to increase the awareness of citizens and of potential stakeholders by focused communication and dissemination activities; (iii) to assess the technical and economic feasibility of best practices in tackling road traffic noise. The paper reports a summary of the activities performed by the partners during the project. ? 2015 S. Schiavoni et al.