UMR AE: Environmental Acoustics

Environmental noise constitutes a major societal problem. Its impact on health is significant, particularly in urban and suburban areas where noise sources are numerous and diverse. Opinions about environmental problem have certainly changed over recent years, but noise nevertheless remains one of the main concerns for French citizens, especially those who live in urban areas, as demonstrated by recent surveys conducted by TNS-SOFRES (May 2010) and IFOP (October 2014). In urban environments, traffic is mentioned as the main source of noise, whether in individual or collective housing. In 2007 public expenditure on anti-noise measures represented 788 million euros, just for noise associated with transport (replacement of exhaust pipe silencers, anti-noise walls, identification and treatment of noise black spots) and 833 million euros for expenditure on building insulations, giving a total of roughly 1.6 billion euros (6% increase per annum from 2000 to 2007).

In the longer term, human societies are confronted with the challenge of guaranteeing their survival, since today humanity is putting the biosphere in grave danger. In particular it is vital to limit climate change and bring a halt to loss of biodiversity. The fight against climate change has repercussions in terms of modes of transport (public transport), modes of production (civil engineering materials), renewable energy production (wind turbines), and thermal rehabilitation of buildings. In order to combat loss of biodiversity it is necessary to improve our knowledge of biodiversity and quantity the impacts human activities have on it. Acousticians are capable of contributing to these different subjects, whether it is by assessing acoustic impacts or by developing characterisation methods based on acoustics.