Noise Network Plus: Engineering a Quieter Future

Noise – unwanted sound – has a major impact on public health, society and wildlife. Noise has a profound effect on human health and wellbeing, causing heart disease, high annoyance and sleep disturbance. Road noise in England alone is estimated to cause £7-10bn of health costs, with 130,000 healthy life years lost each year. Noise pollution affects wildlife, including birds and marine mammals, damaging wildlife health and reproduction. Noise also affects AI systems and sensors, including sonar echo sounders and underwater acoustic modems. As well as existing sources of human-made noise, such as road, rail, and air transport, new technologies such as drones and air taxis could introduce new sources of noise. The transition to Net Zero, through more sustainable energy sources, may also introduce new noise challenges from onshore wind turbines or air source heat pumps. We must ensure that noise does not become a barrier to the wider adoption of these important technologies. However, as the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee reported in 2023, noise is a “neglected pollutant”. It is also largely neglected across the UK engineering community. Outside of the acoustical engineering community and the Institute of Acoustics, noise is almost invisible in the work of professional engineering institutions. Noise is not included in teaching of sustainability in engineering degrees. Hence noise is often neglected until late in the engineering design process, resulting in products, systems and buildings that may create or transmit unnecessary noise. Reducing noise and its impacts is a complex, systemic, and interconnected problem, requiring insights from many perspectives and creative ways of working. It is exactly the type of problem identified in the EPSRC Tomorrow’s Engineering Research Challenges (TERC) report. To address this, our vision is to re-engineer the discipline of engineering so that noise is considered in all stages of the design process. We will create a mission-oriented inter-organizational research and innovation network, “Noise Network Plus”, as a catalyst to bring together diverse, dynamic teams from across disciplines, promote dialogue, co-design missions, form lasting and inclusive collaborations, and build unprecedented noise research capabilities. With noise being such an important concern for many people, we will undertake public engagement from the outset, to involve as wide a community as possible in our research agenda and the co-design of our missions. To test new research ideas, gather missing evidence and carry out feasibility studies, we will fund a set of pilot projects, and support the development of full-scale future multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects to tackle the challenge of noise. We will also reimagine the education and training of engineers, across all engineering disciplines, and work with universities and the professional engineering institutions to including systems thinking in general, and sound and noise in particular, across engineering education. To ensure that the activities of the network are sustained beyond the funded period, we will plan for its legacy from the start, working with universities, industry, and engineering institutions to embed the network connections and missions across the discipline. By taking a “systems thinking” approach to understand the complex systems that build noise into the world, we will begin a long-lasting inter- and multi-disciplinary programme of research and engagement to reduce noise and its impact on people, the environment, and the economy: engineering a quieter future.