ANC Awards 2023 - Innovation Win

The Association of Noise Consultants Awards 2023 took place in Birmingham on 20 September.

The awards “promote and recognise excellence among UK acoustic consultants and look for examples of work that displays innovation, and originality in acoustic design or approach to a particular project.”

NCL was therefore delighted to be awarded a winning entry in the Innovation category for our Environmental Noise Modelling Design and Build project, which is being carried out for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The project, delivered in collaboration with experts and specialists at Mott MacDonald, Stapelfeldt, NGIS and Acustica has broken new ground by creating a system capable of generating a national noise models and exposure datasets. The system has already delivered models in both England and Wales comprising of all public road and railway sources, utilising datasets from stakeholders including Ordnance Survey, Network Rail, National Highways, Environment Agency and Department for Transport.

To achieve this, the system has harnessed cloud computing technology through Microsoft Azure and database solutions, with data transformation software and other high-performance software components to deliver an automated, scalable solution.

Using state of the art LimA calculation cores, in England alone, noise exposure levels have been calculated at 2.6 billion grids points, and along the facades of every residential dwelling, school and hospital, in a manner that unlocks further analysis of noise exposure supporting a wide user base.

The system has also been developed to allow public sector end use of the model for scenario planning. This feature has been developed as part of a web portal, with a launch of this service in the pipeline.

In their award the judges acknowledged that:

“This is a massive piece of work which requires expertise in cloud computing and acoustic modelling. The judges noted it has great potential for use by Local Authorities and is a significant achievement in bringing together noise mapping into a centralised system.

Defra’s Noise Modelling System transforms the way in which Governments can both understand the scale of impact from road and railway noise across the country, but also how Governments can work with stakeholders to integrate their own data sources and provide access to the underlying noise models.”

View all news