DroneNoise: Addressing Public Health and Wellbeing Harms for a Sustainable Drone Sector

目前存在一种风险，即无人机在没有充分考虑其噪音对公众健康和福祉的影响的情况下升空。政府和业界一致认为，无人机技术将带来重要的商机。预计无人机将支持高效提供公共服务，从而带来可观的社会效益。但要实现这一点有一个非常现实的障碍--如果不在设计、运营和政策层面处理噪音问题，这一切都不可能发生。大流行危机推动了无人机运送食物和药品的使用。现在更确定的是，无人机技术将在短期内被广泛采用，用于从包裹递送到人员运输的一系列应用。由于欧盟U-SPACE和英国未来飞行倡议，这些应用程序将增长，这些倡议正在创建一个明确的框架，以允许创造一个无人机服务市场。然而，数百架无人机飞来飞去的噪音肯定会导致与社区的冲突，到目前为止，对于无人机噪音是如何被感知的，以及如何在不影响公众健康和福祉的情况下操作无人机，还没有一个全面的了解。噪音已经是一个严重的问题。根据欧洲环境署的报告，环境噪声已经导致欧洲每年约16,600例过早死亡，近3200万成年人遭受烦恼，超过1300万成年人遭受睡眠障碍。由于无人机的非传统声音特征和操作程序，评估无人机的噪声感知并制定行动以减轻其对社区的影响具有挑战性。声功率的标准测量(欧盟条例2019/945中提出的)不足以描述这一点。但这也是一个创新交通噪音问题处理方式的机会。在这个项目中，我将开发模型来预测人类对无人机噪音的反应。这些感知噪声模型集成到设计周期中，将允许在设计过程的早期预测噪声问题。这种方法将避免在后期阶段进行昂贵和低效的临时修正，因此，将超越传统的飞机噪声评估方法。我将调查背景如何影响无人机的噪声感知。人们不会感觉到无人机将包裹递送给他们的邻居，就像无人机提供医疗用品一样。此外，我将调查一套全面的无人机操作条件下的噪音烦扰和可听性，以确定无人机操作的可接受噪声特性。我项目的成果将告诉我们如何以及在哪里驾驶无人机，以最大限度地减少对现有声音环境的影响。我项目中的工作将通过一个由主要无人机利益相关者组成的指导小组，与行业设计、政策制定和为减少噪音而进行游说的组织联系起来。我将开发一个工具包，以帮助制造商减少他们车辆的噪音影响。开发安静的技术将使拥有700多家实体的英国无人机行业在国内外竞争激烈的市场上占据优势。我还将撰写一份政策简报，通报对人民健康和福祉影响较小的无人机操作法规。对无人机安静操作的监管将允许更多的人使用无人机，造福英国人民。我的项目成果计划对中小型无人机市场产生直接影响，并为未来无人机运输的潜在影响奠定基础。总而言之，我的工作将解决与无人机设计和操作相关的噪音问题，帮助无人机利益相关者确保社区接受，并为该行业的可持续扩张做出贡献。这将有助于保持英国在无人机研发方面的世界领先地位。

There is currently a risk that drones are taking to the air without sufficient consideration of their noise impact on public health and wellbeing. Government and industry agree that drone technologies will lead to a significant business opportunity. Drones are expected to support an efficient provision of public services, and therefore deliver substantial societal benefits. But there is a very real barrier to making this a reality - none of this can happen if noise issues are not taken care of at design, operation and policy levels.The pandemic crisis has served to propel the use of drones to deliver food and medicines. It is now more certain that drone technologies will be widely adopted in the short future for a range of applications from parcel delivery to transport of people. These applications are set to grow thanks to the EC U-space and UK Future Flight initiatives, which are creating a clear framework to allow the creating of a market for drone services. However, the noise of hundreds of drones flying around will certainly lead to conflicts with communities.To date, there is not a comprehensive understanding on how drone noise is perceived and what can be done to operate drones without affecting public health and wellbeing. Noise is already a serious issue. As reported by the European Environment Agency, environmental noise already causes approximately 16,600 cases of premature death in Europe each year, with almost 32 million adults suffering annoyance and over 13 million adults suffering sleep disturbance.Assessing noise perception of drones and developing actions to mitigate their impact on communities is challenging, due to their unconventional sound signatures and operating procedures. Standard measures of sound power (proposed in EU Regulation 2019/945) are inadequate to characterise this. But it's also an opportunity to innovate in the way transportation noise issues are dealt with.In this project, I will develop models to predict human response to drone noise. Integrated into the design cycle, these perception noise models will allow to noise issues to be anticipated early in the design process. This approach will avoid costly and inefficient ad hoc corrections at later stages, and therefore, will go beyond the traditional approach on aircraft noise assessment.I will investigate how context influences drone noise perception. People won't perceive a drone delivering a parcel to their neighbours equally to a drone providing medical supplies. Furthermore, I will investigate noise annoyance and audibility for a comprehensive set of drone operating conditions, to define acceptable noise characteristics for drone operations. The outcomes of my project will inform how and where to fly drones to minimise impact on existing soundscapes.The work in my project will be connected to industry design, policy making and organisations lobbing for noise abatement, through a steering group with the main drone stakeholders. I will develop a toolkit to aid manufacturers to reduce the noise impact of their vehicles. Developing quiet technologies will give the UK drone industry, which has over 700 entities, an edge in a highly competitive market both domestic & overseas. I will also write a policy brief to inform regulations for operating drones with less impact on people's health and wellbeing. Regulations for quiet drone operations would allow greater usage for the benefit of the people in the UK.The outcomes of my project are planned to have direct impact in the small-to-medium size drone market, and set the foundations for potential future impact in drones for transport of people.In summary, my work will address the noise issues related to the design and operation of drones, to aid drone stakeholders to ensure community acceptance, and contribute to the sustainable expansion of the sector. This will contribute to maintain the UK world-leading position on drone research and development.