After the European Environmental Noise Directive prescribed noise maps and action plans, wide scientific literature and a consistent number of mitigation strategies emerged for road, railway, airport, and industrial noise. Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to the noise produced by ports in their surroundings, even though there could be many areas affected by it. At present, more attention seems to be paid to noise produced underwater, mostly for military and security reasons and for its interference with wildlife, rather than airborne noise and its influence on human health. In the framework of a project aiming to shed more light on a topic so far under-investigated, this paper presents an acoustical characterization of different small vessels at various speeds that move around on a daily basis in every type of port, produced by means of short- and long-term measurements. The new information acquired was used to produce a map of noise generated by vessels moving in Livorno’s canals, which branch off in a densely inhabited area. The simulations were validated using long-term measurement. The number of citizens exposed was also estimated and used to calculate the number of highly annoyed people according to the recent curve for road traffic noise proposed by Guski et al. In order to prevent citizen exposure to noise and possible complaints about small boats, different scenarios and possible future situations such as various vessel speeds, limited flow, restricted areas for some categories, or new residential areas were studied.

Noise pollution can significantly limit the growth of the communities located nearby an airport. Pisa International Airport has recently presented its action plan, which includes both the construction of a runway link that increases the take-off run length and the introduction of the ICAO-A noise-abatement procedure. Nevertheless, the airport still needs to develop new strategies to ensure an effective noise reduction as a response to the growing aircraft traffic. This paper shows an innovative approach for managing airport noise on the closest urban areas based on the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology. ADS-B output data were used to track the flight departures with high data resolution and then to verify both the effectiveness of the action plan and the compliance with its provisions. A penetration gate was strategically set considering the departures towards the city. The vertical distribution of the traffic crossing the gate and the correlation between take-off conditions and noise-related events were investigated in order to establish rules for penalties due to the lack of compliance with the action plan requirements. The results confirmed that ADS-B system could be considered a smart tool producing cost-effective solutions for the airport noise management in urban areas, particularly when the radar tracks are not available.

The knowledge of the acoustic impedance of a material allows for the calculation of its acoustic absorption. Impedance can also be linked to structural and physical proprieties of materials. However, while the impedance of pavement samples in laboratory conditions can usually be measured with high accuracy using devices such as the impedance tube, complete in-situ evaluation results are less accurate than the laboratory results and is so time consuming that a full scale implementation of in-situ evaluations is practically impossible. Such a system could provide information on the homogeneity and the correct laying of an installation, which is proven to be directly linked to its acoustic emission properties. The present work studies the development of a measurement instrument which can be fastened through holding elements to a moving laboratory (i.e., a vehicle). This device overcomes the issues that afflict traditional in-situ measurements, such as the impossibility to perform a continuous spatial characterization of a given pavement in order to yield a direct evaluation of the surface’s quality. The instrumentation has been uncoupled from the vehicle’s frame with a system including a Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller, studied to maintain the system at a fixed distance from the ground and to reduce damping. The stabilization of this device and the measurement system itself are evaluated and compared to the traditional one.