Community Response to Noise: Research Progress in East Asia since ICBEN1988

Noise has been recognized to be a serious environmental problem worldwide since the late 20th century. The International Commission on Biological Effects of Noise (ICBEN) has contributed to the global noise policies through ICBEN congresses since the 1st congress in Washington. In particular, research on community response to noise has been progressed not only in western countries but also in Asian countries since ICBEN1988, held in Stockholm. In 1999, WHO community noise guidelines [1] were published based on the research findings accumulated until that point; few research from Asia were quoted and reflected in the guidelines from Asia. In 2018, WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for European Region [2] were published using new findings including quite many Asian studies principally since 2000. This report summarizes the research progress in Japan and Vietnam for more than 30 years.

Sato [3] conducted social surveys on community response to road traffic noise in Gothenburg, Sapporo, and Kumamoto and compared the exposure-annoyance relationships. They showed that while the exposure-annoyance curve for detached house residents in Gothenburg was significantly higher than that for Japanese detached houses, the exposureannoyance curve for apartment house residents in Gothenburg was significantly lower than the corresponding Japanese curve. The former may be partially caused by the specific lifestyle; that is, people enjoy outdoor activities in their gardens and parks during summer in Gothenburg. Yano [4] compared exposure-annoyance relationships between Hokkaido (a colder area of Japan) and Kyushu (a warmer area) and between road traffic and railway noises. No significant difference was found between Hokkaido and Kyushu but railway noise was significantly more annoying than road traffic noise in both areas. This indicated that there was no railway bonus in Japan. Japanese detached houses were closer to the railways than European houses and thus Japanese people may have been more annoyed by railway noise due to not only noise but also vibration exposures.

At the business meeting of ICBEN Team 6 in Nice 1993, Fields and de Jong, the chairs of Team 6, proposed an international joint study to construct standardized noise annoyance scales comparable among different languages and the team members agreed to do so. The protocol of the experiment was devised by Guski and his colleagues. The experimental procedure is very simple. First, recruit at least 30 subjects from at least two areas in a linguistic region. Then, have the subjects do the following:
a. Select 21 modifiers describing annoyance degrees from the minimum to maximum.
b. Classify the 21 modifiers into nine categories at the maximum.
c. Select modifiers appropriate for a 5-point scale.
d. Select modifiers appropriate for a 4-point scale.
e. Make line-marking evaluation of the intensities of the modifiers.

Using this data, construct standardized scales according to the following three criteria: equidistance (the modifiers for the scale should be equidistant), preference (the modifiers should be selected at each scale point but not at the other points), and agreement (the standard deviation of the intensity should be small).

In the joint study, standardized noise annoyance scales were constructed in nine languages [5]. Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Turkish. English scales were “not at all,” “slightly,” “moderately,” “very,” and “extremely.” Afterwards nine scales were individually constructed in Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Polish, Danish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Slovenian. These were adopted in ISO TS 15666 [6].

Fields [7,8] and Bassarab [9] published three updated catalogs of social surveys of residents reaction to environmental noise. They collected 318 surveys in 1991, 521 in 2000, and 628 in 2009. Of these only 5, 15, and 32 surveys are listed from Asian countries other than Japan in the respective catalogs. In this context, Nguyen [10] have conducted social surveys on road traffic and aircraft noises in five cities of Vietnam since 2005. They compared the exposure-annoyance relationships with those in EU [11]. The exposure-annoyance curve for aircraft noise in Vietnam was consistent with EU’s but that for road traffic noise in Vietnam was much lower than EU’s. The latter may be because a huge number of motorbikes were utilized for the daily use in Vietnam and people were used to the road traffic noise. Nguyen [12] studied the effects of step changes in aircraft noise exposure around Hanoi Noi Bai International Airport before and after the operation of the new terminal building in December 2014 from September 2014 to August 2018. While annoyance increased just after the operation in March and September 2015, the exposure-annoyance curve gradually approached to the curve before the operation. They have also performed step-change studies around Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam [13].

Since the late 1990s, many wind farms have been constructed to produce renewable energy for environmental sustainability throughout Japan. Serious noise problems have occurred near the wind farms. In such social contexts, a research project entitled “Research on the evaluation of human impact of low frequency noise from wind turbine generators” was conducted from 2010 to 2012, under the auspice of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan [14]. Kuwano [15] performed social surveys on public health at 34 sites near wind farms from Hokkaido (the northern area of Japan) to Okinawa (the southern area). The exposure-annoyance curve was drawn and compared with that for road traffic noise in Japan. Wind turbine noise was more annoying than road traffic noise and the difference was around 9 to 6 dB in the range from 10 to 20% Highly Annoyed (HA). This trend is consistent with the other studies, such as Janssen [16].