Gabrovo Municipality implemented a new solution for noise pollution monitoring

Environmental noise, also known as background noise or noise pollution, is the propagation of noise with ranging impacts on the activity of human or animal life. Noise pollution is a growing problem, especially in more urbanized areas where long-term noise exposure can have a negative impact on the human health; this includes irritation, sleep disturbances, cardiovascular dysfunctions, metabolic disorders and others. In Europe, around 20% of the population is exposed to continuous background noise at levels which are harmful to their health, according to the European Environment Agency (EEA).

In the EU, a legislative framework is applied, transposed to local legislation in Ordinance №6 on environmental noise indicators. In order to monitor their compliance with the legislative framework and to accumulate data, needed to make adequate decisions when reducing the background noise, Gabrovo Municipality implemented a modern solution for real-time monitoring of the background noise supplied by Senstate Technologies.

The integrated monitoring solution reports in real time the level of environmental noise and calculates the indicators for the measured equivalent levels and their corresponding threshold. Even more, this solution gives the opportunity to analyze the history readings in order to identify possible dependencies. The data are available to all citizens of the city. They can access the data through the environmental portal of Gabrovo Municipality (green.gabrovo.bg).