£33444

Tender description

Introduction The Interdepartmental Group on Costs and Benefits (IGCB) is a Defra-led group of government analysts that provides analysis and advice relating to the quantification and valuation of local environmental impacts. It aims to do this through the development of methodology, evidence reviews and subsequent recommendations. The Noise subject group IGCB(N) published its most recent recommendations here in 2014. These recommendations have since been incorporated into the DfT transport analysis guidance (WebTAG) and the HMT Green Book on appraisal and evaluation. On 10th October 2018, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Office for Europe published its Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region. The guidelines provide recommendations for protecting human health from exposure to environmental noise originating from various sources: transportation (road traffic, railway and aircraft) noise, wind turbine noise and leisure noise. The development of the guideli Lot 1: Sufficient amounts of undisturbed sleep are paramount for daytime cognitive performance and long-term health. Therefore, sleep disturbance is considered one of the most detrimental effects of traffic noise. In 2018, Basner and McGuire performed a systematic review of the literature on the effects of environmental noise exposure on sleep for the revision of WHO's Environmental Noise Guidelines. Their review was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (Basner, M. and S. McGuire: WHO Environmental Noise Guidelines for the European Region: A Systematic Review on Environmental Noise and Effects on Sleep. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(3), 2018). The review concentrated on literature published since the publication of WHO's last Community Noise Guidelines in 1999, and the literature search was restricted to the period January 1, 2000 until December 1, 2015. Since then, several relevant studies were published that were identified in a literature reviewed commissioned by Defra and performed by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) - Netherlands in 2019. It will therefore be important to update the WHO exposure-response functions for the effects of road, rail, and aircraft noise on self- reported sleep disturbance by including the newly identified studies.