Work Package 5 : Dissemination and exploitation
Objectives
The main objective of the Harmonoise Project is to provide a " harmonised, accurate and reliable " model for the purpose of noise prediction and to promote the use of this model in place of existing national models in all countries of the European Community. The acceptance of the model by all interested parties, from scientists and engineers up to citizens and policy makers is essential for the future exploitation of the outcome of the project.
It is known from experiences in different European countries that scientific acceptance is a good basis for the larger acceptance by the community, including non-specialist in the domain of acoustical modelling and measurement.
The accuracy of the model as compared to more complex scientific models, the validation of the model with regard to experimantal data and the usefullness of the model for tasks acoustic engineers are dealing with (such as noise impact prediction or noise mapping), will have been proved in work package 3. These results will be communicated to all interested parties through more traditionnal paths, such as papers, conferences and congresses but also by means of more innovative electronic ways such as internet and electronic mail.
Further exploitation of the results of the Harmonise Project will be promoted by proposing the prediction model developped within the project as the basis of a future European standard. Results from the project will be compiled in a synthesis report that fully descibes the measurement methods for the assesment of the required input data and the predicition models themselves. Some prototype input data will be included as well as test cases against with software implementations of the model can be checked for conformity.
Two of the members of the Harmonoise Consortium develop commercial software packages. These packages implement essentially their own national standards for road and railway noise or the ISO 9613-2 standard for industrial noise. They will promote the " Harmonoise " model by implementing it as an alternative to existing models.
Latest at the end of the project the Harmonoise Consortium, or part of it, will agree on a common commercial strategy to make the basic software implementation of the model available to third parties such as independant software providers or application service providers that want to integrate the model in their own integrated environment without writing their own implementation based on the paper description. This group of partners will also keep the software up to date with regard to changes in the model, evolution of computer equipment, extension of common databases or corrected bugs if needed.
Scientific and technical communication
The project shall establish regular and frequent communication of information to the scientists, future users and policy makers in the Member States of the EC. This will be achieved by specific publications both in scientific and technical reviews or by presenting papers at European or international congresses and conferences (e.g. the Annual conference of Internoise when it takes place in Europe and Euronoise otherwise). The first paper of this series is already envisaged at the Internoise 2001 conference in The Hague, where dr. J. Kragh of Delta will be a session chairman in the "noise propagation" session and P.de Vos will present a paper on " opportunities for an improved harmonised noise prediction method in Europe".
Another opportunity is offered at the conferences organised by the Commission on a regular basis in the framework of the EU Directive (Scheveningen, Copenhagen). Members of the Consortium will actively participate in these conferences, as they were used to do in the past.
Particularly a good and intense relationship will have to be established with the EU working groups on noise which are still active, viz. wg2 on dose-response relationships (on expected accuracy of the methods), wg4 on mapping (ditto) and wg5 on noise abatement plans.
Special attention is required for those member states not represented in the Consortium. Probably a good relationship can be established through the national acoustical societies, which represent future users. The EC will be asked for special contacts in the field of legislators in these countries, so that they can be members of a network of future users.
All partners are concerned with this task but no distribution of tasks is possible at the moment. In order to promote this form of communication, some incentive credits can be foreseen by the Consortium’s Agreement. If possible, a special "Harmonoise" session will be organised during the second or third year of the project within one of the international congresses hold in Europe.
The Harmonoise web site
A public web site will be dedicated to the project where people can find out all relevant information concerning the project’s objectives, the organisations involved, the people involved, the plans, the results, draft versions of reports, minutes of meetings (after being authorised for publication by the steering committee).
This web site will also include a mailing list to which other people (members of the commission, members of other working groups, representives of national authorities,…) can subscribe in order to be kept informed about the progress of the project. An electronic newsletter will be send to these people on a three or four monthly basis, containing a summary of the project’s progress and links to information available on the web site.
The web site will also contain a discussion group (forum) were all interested parties can exchange information with the Harmonoise Consortium and give feedback on the proposed methods and models.
Organisation of a Harmonoise seminar
At least one dedicated seminar will be organised for policy makers and future end users, where first results from the project will be communicated and discussion with these parties can take place.
The goal of this conference is to enlarge the scientific and rechnical acceptance of the model towards a larger public, including European and national policy makers and even interested associations of citizens.
Proposal for a future European standard
At the end of the project, nearly all partners will make some effort to compile the results of their contribution in a synthesis report that clearly describes the model in all his details (input data, assessment methods, formulae, expected accuracy,…) and with the necessarilly coherence (symbols, quantities, database formats,…) so that the translation into a future European standard can be done without too much extra workload.
The Harmonoise Consortium or some of its members may form a Thematical Network to assist the Comission and the working groups on Noise Policy in the preparation of this future standard.
Preparation of exploitation plan
Some negociation will be needed between members of the Harmonoise Consortium for the definition of the common commercial stategy for exploitation of the software developped during the project. The outcome of this negociation is beyond the scope of the project itself, but some partners have already shown interest in the future exploitation of the software, either within their own software packages, for the use in their commercial activities such as noise mapping or as software providers for third parties that will integrate the model in larger software packages or as application service providers.
Network
Below are some examples of the committees and standardisation bodies were members of the consortium are represented at the moment. This network will be used for further dissemination of the project and to determine the people to be invited to the Harmonoise conference(s).
ISO/TC 43/SC 1/WG 33: "Measuring Method for Comparing Noise on Different Road Surfaces"
ISO/TC 43/SC 1/WG 38: "Procedure for measuring sound absorption properties of road sur-faces – In-situ method"
ISO/TC 43/SC 1/WG 45: "Revision of ISO 1996 "Description, measurement and assessment of environmental noise".
Technical Committee Environmental Noise 2000. General Nordic sound propagation model and applications in source related prediction methods (Chairman)
European Commission Noise Policy Working Group 3: "Computation and Measurement" (Co-chair).
NATO/CCMS Working Group study on "Effects of Topography on Propagation of Noise in the Vicinity of Airfields". Development of algorithms for prediction of aircraft sound propagation.