The aim of the project is to understand, how environmental noise should be measured so that the result would represent the perceived annoyance. The project focuses on residential environments.

The project is important because the potential disadvantages of environmental noise are increasingly recognized in the society. The noise regulations and their development occupies authorities, business, media and citizens. The pivotal disadvantage of noise is annoyance. Subjectively perceived annoyance and objectively measured noise level are not always associated with each other. Annoyance can be strongly associated with various non-acoustic factors such as attitudes, expectations, situational factors and individual factors.
 
Project involves both listening experiments in laboratory conditions and socio-acoustic surveys in residential environments. Project focuses on environmental sounds which are tonal, impulsive and temporally varying. The project includes also a work package focusing on the sound insulation of the facades of single-family houses at low frequencies.

The results will be scientific articles and shorter summary papers in Finnish. Results can be benefited in standardization, development of noise regulations, noise-related public communication, education and product development.