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就升空了。政府和业界一致认为，无人机技术将带来巨大的商机。无人机有望支持高效提供公共服务，从而带来巨大的社会效益。但是，要实现这一目标有一个非常现实的障碍——如果噪音问题在设计、操作和政策层面得不到重视，这一切都不可能发生。疫情危机推动了无人机运送食品和药品的使用。现在可以肯定的是，无人机技术将在不久的将来被广泛应用于从包裹递送到人员运输的一系列应用中。由于欧盟U-space和英国未来飞行计划，这些应用将会增长，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，人们对如何感知无人机噪音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，环境噪音每年已经导致欧洲大约16600例过早死亡，近3200万成年人受到噪音的困扰，超过1300万成年人受到睡眠障碍的困扰。由于其非常规的声音特征和操作程序，评估无人机的噪音感知并制定措施以减轻其对社区的影响是具有挑战性的。标准的声功率测量（在欧盟法规2019/945中提出）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。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。这种方法可以避免在后期进行成本高昂和效率低下的临时修正，因此，它将超越传统的飞机噪音评估方法。我将研究环境如何影响无人机噪音感知。人们不会把给邻居送包裹的无人机看作是提供医疗用品的无人机。此外，我将调查噪音烦恼和可听性的一套全面的无人机操作条件，以定义无人机操作可接受的噪音特性。我的项目成果将告诉我们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、政策制定和致力于减少噪音的组织联系起来。我将开发一个工具包，帮助制造商减少车辆的噪音影响。开发静音技术将使拥有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，告知对人们健康和福祉影响较小的无人机操作法规。为了英国人民的利益，静音无人机操作的规定将允许更多地使用无人机。我的项目成果计划对中小型无人机市场产生直接影响，并为未来无人机对人员运输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。

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.