From A Global Review of Port Noise Management Initiatives to A Specific Port City’s Case Study

Abstract

The increasing port activities enrich the contents of port-city interaction. With the awareness of global climate change and marine environment protection, more and more ports intend to become environmental-friendly or green ports. Both literature and practice on reducing emissions of air, waste and sewage are growing and developing, but fewer attention has been paid to the port noise emission and its impacts for nearby sensitive receivers. This research chooses the port noise management to find the gap and make a feasible proposal for Port of Gothenburg on noise initiatives dealing with issue in American Cruise Terminal. Through a global review of current ports having noise mitigation measures, the results show that only 46 out of 204 ports have taken such action. Total 126 measures are identified, classified and analyzed with selected parameters on port noise. Europe has the most ports for actively dealing with noise problems, and top 5 ports taking more measures are Port of New South Wales, Port of New York and New Jersey, Port of Helsinki, Port of Auckland, and Port of Metro Vancouver. The most common initiatives are technology (both directly and indirectly), infrastructure (in port area) and investigation (by monitoring). In addition, the stage of mitigation, noise source type, and governance ownership are analyzed. Then in the case study, Port of Los Angeles is implementing customized noise mitigation plans according to different projects in port, and the effectiveness is proved. Also the port-city interaction in Los Angeles gives lessons from various aspects to port of Gothenburg. That the local situations lead to uniqueness of each port city make us realize that in terms of the port-city interaction on port noise issue, both two parties are indispensable. And with the help of professional acoustics knowledge, port authority should be aware of the overall situation across the world and the necessity of learning from some advanced port cities.