Latest ETC Reports (included in homepage)

This report assesses the potential health benefits of reducing noise annoyance from road traffic and railway noise by increasing green space exposure in European agglomerations. Using data from the Environmental Noise Directive (END) and green space availability based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), two scenarios were evaluated: achieving the WHO recommendation for universal access to green spaces (i.e. at least 0.5 hectares within a 300 m or a 5-minute walk from home) or a 10% increase in NDVI. The findings show that increased green space availability could reduce the number of highly noise-annoyed adults by up to 9.6% for road traffic noise and 6.8% for railway noise, potentially preventing almost one million highly annoyed adults in Europe. These results highlight the importance of promoting and enhancing urban green spaces to mitigate noise-related health impacts and improve overall well-being.

This report provides guidelines for the development of socioeconomic indicators to assess future exposure and vulnerability to future climate hazards and inform science-policy assessments.

This report aims to provide a deeper understanding of the diverse landscape of adaptation policy frameworks and instruments utilized across the 38 European Environment Agency member and cooperating countries, exploring their defining characteristics and how they operate within national contexts. Particular attention is given to countries with national climate laws governing climate change adaptation. The report provides an assessment of adaptation policy documents and reports published through July 2024.

Exploring Current Practices and Innovations for Reporting on Policies and Measures and Greenhouse Gas Projections

The aim of this report is to critically evaluate methods to assess the health risk of environmental noise for Europe and propose adaptations to the previously used methodology where necessary. Part I presents a refined methods for noise exposure assessment in Europe. Part 2 presents up-to-date exposure-response associations from an Umbrella+ review. High certainty evidence was found for effects of transportation noise on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Additional, evidence is emerging for effects on depression, dementia, overweight, cognitive impairments in adults and children and behavioural problems in children. The new body of evidence shows negative effects due to transport noise at lower levels (Lden=45 dB) than those captured in the European Environmental Noise Directive. In Part 3, proposals for disability weights and quantifying economic costs of health risks are made. The proposed changes of the health risk assessment methods reflect recent progress in noise research.