Environmental Noise — Integrating and sharing geographic data sets

Noise is a major environmental concern. To address this issue, the European Commission (EC) launched the Environmental Noise Directive (END), whose main objective is to assess and manage noise from various sources, including airports, roads, railways and agglomerations. An effective implementation of END requires the harmonisation of data supplied by various national agencies such as municipalities and airport authorities. This paper presents the Portuguese approach to the harmonisation of data, as part of the END implementation, which was coordinated by the Portuguese Environmental Agency (APA). It also describes a set of principles and procedures developed by APA to ensure data harmonisation and integration in a single platform, which provides interoperable information to decision makers, key stakeholders and general public, through Web Services.