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

This report provides an updated methodology for two scenarios of noise exposure in 2030 as support for the Zero Pollution Action Plan. The scenarios use 2017 as the baseline for people exposed to transport noise sources (inside and outside agglomerations). Since 2019, countries can no longer use their national calculation methods, must change to CNOSSOS-EU, and must adapt the method in which population and receiving points are distributed across the façade of the buildings. Therefore, the exposure data from 2017 is estimated based on backdating reported data in 2022. The data reported and gap filled in 2022 are used as the latest available data and as an intermediate point between 2017 and 2030. Assessment of scenarios follows the same workflow for all noise sources and is based on the change in population exposure due to demographic factors, transport data, and relevant noise abatement measures between 2022 and 2030.