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

DroneNoise：解决公共健康和福祉危害，实现可持续的无人机行业

• 批准号: EP/V031848/1
• 负责人: Antonio Martinez
• 金额: $ 36.37万
• 依托单位: University of Salford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FV031848%2F1
• 关键词: DroneNoise; Addressing; Public; Health; Wellbeing

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.

目前存在的风险是，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。政府和工业界一致认为，无人机技术将带来巨大的商业机会。无人机有望支持有效提供公共服务，从而带来巨大的社会效益。但要实现这一点，还有一个非常真实的障碍--如果在设计、运营和政策层面不考虑噪音问题，这一切都不可能发生。大流行危机推动了无人机用于运送食品和药品。现在可以肯定的是，无人机技术将在不久的将来被广泛采用，用于从包裹递送到人员运输的一系列应用。这些应用将由于EC U-space和英国未来飞行计划而增长，这些计划正在创建一个明确的框架，以允许创建无人机服务市场。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。迄今为止，人们对无人机噪音的感知方式以及如何在不影响公共健康和福祉的情况下操作无人机并没有全面的了解。噪音已经是一个严重的问题。根据欧洲环境署的报告，环境噪音每年在欧洲造成约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。由于无人机的非常规声音特征和操作程序，评估无人机的噪音感知并制定行动以减轻其对社区的影响具有挑战性。声功率的标准措施（在欧盟法规2019/945中提出）不足以解决这一问题。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。集成到设计周期中，这些感知噪声模型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成本高昂和效率低下的临时修正，因此，将超越飞机噪声评估的传统方法。人们不会认为无人机向邻居运送包裹与提供医疗用品的无人机一样。此外，我将调查一套全面的无人机操作条件下的噪音烦恼和可听度，以定义无人机操作可接受的噪音特性。我的项目的成果将告知如何以及在哪里飞行无人机，以尽量减少对现有音景的影响。我的项目中的工作将通过与主要无人机利益相关者的指导小组，与工业设计，政策制定和游说降噪的组织联系起来。我将开发一个工具包，以帮助制造商减少其车辆的噪音影响。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中占据优势。我还将撰写一份政策简报，为无人机操作提供法规信息，减少对人们健康和福祉的影响。安静的无人机操作的法规将允许更多的使用，以造福英国人民。我的项目的成果计划在中小型无人机市场产生直接影响，并为无人机未来用于运输人员的潜在影响奠定基础。总之，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发展做出贡献。这将有助于保持英国在无人机研发方面的世界领先地位。

项目成果

Noise from Unconventional Aircraft: A Review of Current Measurement Techniques, Psychoacoustics, Metrics and Regulation

非常规飞机的噪声：当前测量技术、心理声学、指标和法规的回顾

• DOI: 10.1007/s40726-023-00285-4
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Current Pollution Reports
• 影响因子: 7.3
• 作者: Lotinga M

Requirements for Drone Operations to Minimise Community Noise Impact.

• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19159299
• 发表时间: 2022-07-29
• 期刊: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND PUBLIC HEALTH
• 作者: Ramos-Romero, Carlos;Green, Nathan;Roberts, Seth;Clark, Charlotte;Torija, Antonio J.
• 通讯作者: Torija, Antonio J.

Perception of noise from unmanned aircraft systems: Efficacy of metrics for indoor and outdoor listener positions.

无人机系统噪声感知：室内和室外听者位置指标的有效性。

• DOI: 10.1121/10.0024522
• 发表时间: 2024
• 期刊: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• 作者: Green N

Assessment of drone noise impact on urban soundscapes

评估无人机噪声对城市声景的影响

• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Internoise 2022 - 51st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering
• 作者: Nicholls R.K.

On-field noise measurements and acoustic characterisation of multi-rotor small unmanned aerial systems

多旋翼小型无人机系统的现场噪声测量和声学表征

• DOI: 10.1016/j.ast.2023.108537
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Aerospace Science and Technology
• 影响因子: 5.6
• 作者: Ramos-Romero C