Indicator 11.20 Population living in households suffering from noise

The indicator measures the proportion of the population who declare that they are affected either by noise from neighbours or from the street. Because the assessment of noise pollution is subjective, it should be noted that the indicator accounts for both the levels of noise pollution as well as people’s standards of what level they consider to be acceptable. Therefore, an increase in the value of the indicator may not necessarily indicate a similar increase in noise pollution levels but also a decrease of the levels that European citizens are willing to tolerate and vice versa. In fact, there is empirical evidence that perceived environmental quality by individuals is not always consistent with the actual environmental quality assessed using ‘objective’ indicators, particularly for noise.

Indicator is used to monitor progress towards SDG 11 on making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable and SDG 3 on good health and well-being. SDG 11 is embedded in the European Commission’s Priorities under ‘A new era for European Defence and Security’, ‘Supporting people, strengthening our societies and our social model’, ‘Sustaining our quality of life: food security, water and nature’ and ‘Protecting our democracy, upholding our values’. SDG 3 is embedded in the European Commission’s Priorities under ‘Supporting people, strengthening our societies and our social model’.

SDG 11 aims to renew and plan cities and other human settlements so that they offer opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation, green public spaces and others, while improving resource use and reducing environmental impacts. SDG 3 aims to ensure health and well-being for all at all ages by improving reproductive, maternal and child health; ending the epidemics of major communicable diseases; reducing non-communicable and mental diseases. It also calls for reducing behavioural and environmental health-risk factors. The Environmental Noise Directive is the main EU instrument for identifying and combating noise pollution. It focuses on three action areas: determination of exposure to environmental noise; ensuring that information on environmental noise and its effects is made available to the public; preventing and reducing environmental noise where necessary and particularly where exposure levels can induce harmful effects on human health and preserving environmental noise quality where it is good.

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