To achieve the research objectives in order to embrace a holistic approach, six themes have been defined:
As part of our training, all of us are working to acquire the following skills:
- Theme 1 – Planning Skills: Supplying the required knowledge on city planning, traffic planning as well as cost benefit calculations.
- Theme 2 – Public Outreach Skills: Training of communication skills as well as developing tools (e.g. such as auralisation and visualisation tools) to enhance communication between traditionally diverse groups such as engineers, city planners, and architects. Introduction to project management, teambuilding and leadership.
The 14 of us are working in at least one of these 3 themes:
- Theme 3 – Prediction methods: Providing the access to state-of-art prediction methods beyond today’s engineering practise. The methods are especially important for quiet areas such as in inner yards or areas far away from main roads.
- Theme 4 – Soundscaping: Establishing newly emerged evaluation and design methods for the acoustic environment based on the perception of people living in these environments as standard working tools.
- Theme 5 – Noise control engineering: Introducing currently available tools for control of noise from road and rail transportation. Extending these tools to more efficient and environmentally friendly implementations.
And last, we are all trying to implement this approeach in our daily work:
- Theme 6 – Holistic approach: Searching for optimal solutions by combining the different tools contained in themes 1-5 in order to achieve a long term and overall improvement of the acoustic environment. This is implemented together with the test sites.
