NOISE ASSESSMENT OF THE WATER TRAFFIC IN VENICE CRUISE PORT AREA

Environmental management of port areas concerns the functional organization of activities and operations to attain high standards of environmental protection. Effective environmental management requires scientific evidence on which to make decisions, the identification of key performance indicators by which to demonstrate achievement, and appropriate monitoring in order to assess both the efficacy of management and the quality of the environment itself. The control of environmental noise is based on a wide variety of strategies. Noise surveys are expensive and require a large investment of resources. Therefore, a great effort must be made to try and achieve the best compromise between resources expended and the reliability of the data collected in order to increase cost efficiency. In recent years, Venice Port Authority (APV) has promoted a number of studies on port areas, one that involves the port improving environmental conditions while pursuing new economic development goals. As part of a wider project this study carried out by the University of Padova on behalf of APV, developed an acoustic model using commercial software to simulate the water traffic noise in Venice cruise port area.