This study proposes a new metric that characterises accessibility to “quiet areas”, as defined

by the Environmental Noise Directive (END), in urban agglomerations by using Geographical

Information System software in conjunction with END noise mapping results. The metric

methodology is shown and it is used to determine lack of access to quiet spaces in social disadvantaged areas in the city of Southampton, United Kingdom. The results can help urban planners to identify districts that need better provision of tranquil spaces and to enforce measures to protect existing quiet areas. The study concludes with a description of the implementation of the quiet area accessibility metric in open source internet urban mapping

tools

Barlow, Chris

Battaner-Moro, Juan

Wright, Paul

English

Solent Electronic Archive

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 1 
A Quiet Area Accessibility Metric for the 
Southampton Urban Agglomeration 
J. Battaner-Moro1, C. Barlow2, P. Wright3 
Southampton Solent University  
1
juan.battaner-moro@solent.ac.uk 
2
christopher.barlow@solent.ac.uk 
3
paul.wright@solent.ac.uk 
Abstract 
This study proposes a new metric that characterises accessibility to “quiet areas”, as defined 
by the Environmental Noise Directive (END), in urban agglomerations by using Geographical 
Information System software in conjunction with END noise mapping results.  The metric 
methodology is shown and it is used to determine lack of access to quiet spaces in social 
disadvantaged areas in the city of Southampton, United Kingdom. The results can help urban 
planners to identify districts that need better provision of tranquil spaces and to enforce 
measures to protect existing quiet areas. The study concludes with a description of the 
implementation of the quiet area accessibility metric in open source internet urban mapping 
tools. 
Keywords: Noise metrics, quiet areas, environmental justice. 
1 Introduction 
Noise Action Plans have recently been introduced in England to address the management 
and noise issues and effects in urban agglomerations under the terms of the Environmental 
Noise (England) Regulations 2006 as amended. These regulations transpose Directive 
2002/49/AC relating to the Assessment and Management of Environmental Noise, commonly 
referred to as the Environmental Noise Directive or END. 
 
The Noise Regulations require that Action Plans for agglomerations include provisions that 
aim to identify Quiet Areas and protect them from an increase in noise (from those sources 
covered by the END). Quiet Areas are to be formally identified by a governmental competent 
authority in consultation with local authorities at each agglomeration. 
 
The English Government has recognized that open spaces contribute to the quality of urban 
life. Open spaces that are designated as Quiet Areas will get a status enhancement. Local 
INTERNOISE 2010 │ JUNE 13-16 │ LISBON │ PORTUGAL 
2 
authorities will be then mandated to adopt policies to protect the quietness of these open 
spaces, integrating them with wider policies to attain the goal of sustained development. 
 
The recognition of the importance of Quiet Areas as an enhancement to the urban 
environment leads to the question of how much of the urban population of a given 
agglomeration, with a particular environmental noise environment, can benefit from access to 
them. In particular, do the most vulnerable people from a social point of view have the same 
level of access to quiet open spaces as the most advantaged social groups? 
 
2 Social deprivation and noise exposure 
Poverty has been defined as not having enough financial means to meet needs. On the other 
hand, deprivation refers to unmet need, which is caused by a lack of resources of all kinds, 
not just financial. In the context of this research we will be referring to “tranquillity deprivation” 
as an indicator of social disadvantage. 
2.1 Deprivation indices in England 
In order to identify the most disadvantaged areas in England deprivation indices are used so 
that resources can be appropriately targeted.  
 
To be able to measure deprivation at a smaller spatial scale, studies have been conducted at 
a so-called Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) level. 
Super Output Areas (SOAs) are a unit of geography used in the UK for statistical analysis. 
They are developed and released by Neighbourhood Statistics. 
SOAs were created with the intention that they would not be subject to frequent boundary 
change. This makes SOAs more suitable than other geography units (such as wards) 
because they are less likely to change over time, and thus SOAs are more suitable to 
change over time analysis. 
Lower SOAs have a minimum population of 1000, and mean population 1500.There are 
34,378 LSOAs in England and Wales. 
The Indices of Deprivation 2007 for England take into account seven domains of deprivation 
at LSOA level [1]: 
 
• Income deprivation 
• Employment deprivation 
• Health deprivation and disability 
• Education, skills and training deprivation 
• Barriers to housing and services 
• Living environment and deprivation 
• Crime 
 
Each domain is assessed using a number of indicators, such as household overcrowding, 
criminal damage, houses without central heating and so on. 38 indicators are used in total, 
but none of these indicators take into account environmental noise pollution. 
 
 
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3 
2.2 The impact of environmental noise exposure on urban population 
It has been widely document that environmental noise has a cumulative adverse effect on 
health [2]. It is now accepted that continuous noise exposure above certain levels correlate 
with an increase in annoyance and sleep disturbance. From a social point of view it has been 
shown that environmental noise near schools can have a detrimental effect on the academic 
attainments of primary school children for example [3]. 
 
In spite of this, environmental noise exposure is not used as an indicator for English social 
deprivation statistics. 
 
Are the most vulnerable people in cities more likely to live in areas with a high environmental 
noise exposure? Subjectively it would appear that this is not necessarily the case. One 
needs only to walk along a very affluent area of London such as Knightsbridge to see that it 
suffers from very high levels of road traffic noise. 
 
Therefore it would appear that high levels of traffic noise do not deter affluent individuals to 
buy property in desirable parts of a city. There may be several reasons for this. For example 
wealthy people can afford to spend extra money on high standards of acoustic insulation, 
they may own other properties in quieter locations in which they can retire when a more 
tranquil environment is desirable or there may be a “quiet space”, such as a park, in the 
vicinity of their property. Following our previous example, one of the reasons that 
Knightsbridge is such a desirable location in London is the vicinity of Hyde Park. 
 
So the question regarding the relationship between social disadvantage and exposure to 
noise should be reassessed. It could be said that “tranquillity deprivation” reflects the lack of 
resources to mitigate noise exposure, and these resources are effective noise insulation at 
home and easy access to quiet spaces. 
 
English deprivation statistics do not take into account the quality of noise insulation. 
However, the “Living Environment and Deprivation” domain include data on “social and 
private housing in poor condition” [1], which may correlate well with poor acoustic insulation. 
Thus, a basic assessment of tranquillity deprivation for urban agglomerations in England 
would only require a quiet space accessibility indicator. 
3 Quiet Areas and the European Noise Directive 
Through the realisation that noise pollution is still a worsening problem; the European Union 
has started to coordinate policies that aim to tackle this problem. It has stipulated continuous 
noise monitoring in urban agglomerations, implemented public information campaigns and 
requested Local Authorities to produce long term noise action plans. 
 
The European Parliament and the Council adopted Directive 2002/49/EC relating to the 
assessment and management of environmental noise. Its general aim being 'to define a 
common approach intended to avoid, prevent or reduce on a prioritised basis the harmful 
effects, including annoyance, due to exposure to environmental noise'. 
3.1 Definition of a Quiet Area 
Based on the recommendations from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural 
Affairs, Quiet Areas are identified in agglomerations based on the selection of an 
appropriate, existing dataset, e.g. public and open spaces in the UK, and subsequent 
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4 
reduction of the dataset by the successive application of filters related to for example, land 
type, a pre-determined noise level (at least part of the candidate area must fall within the less 
than 55dB Lday noise band, as determined from the first round of noise mapping) and a 
minimum area (the candidate area must be at least 9 hectares) [4]. 
3.2 Southampton parkland 
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. It 
lies at the northernmost point of Southampton Water at the confluence of the River Test and 
River Itchen, which divides the city into an eastern and a western half, with the River Hamble 
joining to the south of the urban area. The local authority is Southampton City Council. 
For the purposes of the END, the city is part of the Southampton Agglomeration, which also 
comprises Eastleigh to the North and other smaller conurbations totalling 295,000 
inhabitants. This paper will focus on the city of Southampton exclusively.  
Southampton's parks make it the one of the greenest cities in Southern England. Close to the 
Old Town are seven formal parks which were originally common land in medieval times. The 
large 133 hectares Common, located relatively close to the city centre, is designated a Site 
of Special Scientific Interest. 
Other large parks are Mayfield Park and Riverside Park (Figure 1). Table 1 summarises all 
parks in Southampton sorted by their extension. 
The first five parks in Table 1 are larger than nine hectares. Unfortunately the results of the 
first round of END for Southampton do not include noise exposure modelling for 
Southampton Municipal, Riverside Park and Mayfield Park (Figure 2). At the time of writing 
this the authors could not establish the reasons why three of the largest parks in the city 
were left out from the Lden calculations. 
 
Table 1 – Southampton city parks 
Name Extension (hectares) 
The Common 133.5 
Southampton Municipal 52.0 
Riverside Park 26.9 
Mayfield Park 26.2 
Peartree Green 12.1 
Mansel Park 10.0 
Green Park 6.6 
Andrews Park 6.1 
Hoglands Park 5.2 
Mayflower Park 4.6 
Freemantle Common 3.6 
Palmerston Park 3.3 
Hinkler Green 2.9 
Watts Park 2.6 
Houndwell Park 1.8 
Freemantle Lake Park 1.7 
St James Park 1.5 
Queen's Park 1.5 
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From these three parks that have no END data available, Riverside Park may not be 
considered a Quiet Area due to its location directly under the noise footprint of Southampton-
Eastleigh Airport and its proximity to the M27 motorway. Southampton Municipal’s is mostly 
occupied by a golf course and other sport fields. Mayfield Park however is located in an area 
of relative low noise and could be considered a candidate for “Quiet Area” designation. 
 
 
Figure 1 – Southampton city Lower Super Output Area divisions and main parks 
There exists END noise data available for three parks larger than 9ha: the Common, Mansel 
Park and Peartree Green. Mansel Park’s Lden due to road traffic is larger than 55dB. Peartree 
Green’s Lden is also larger than 55dB but in this case rail noise is the dominant source. This 
leaves the Common as the clear candidate for “Quiet Area” designation. 
Therefore in this paper the Common (in the western half of the city) and Mayfield Park (in the 
eastern half) will be considered Quiet Areas for the purpose of calculating accessibility using 
the proposed metric.  
3.3 First round END results 
Figure 2 shows modelled Lden road noise levels for Southampton. The areas not modelled 
are shown in white and are not populated. Crucially, some of these areas (denoted by red 
arrows) are parks that could be candidates for Quiet Area designation. 
3.3.1 Calculating mean noise exposure for each LSOA 
Initial noise data was sourced from the DEFRA noise model. The resulting GIS file took the 
form of semi-contiguous regions of modelled noise data, which, in itself was difficult to 
disaggregate back into the individual 10x10m grid used to model the data. Therefore, the 
relevant data were forced into a 100x100m grid, the decreased resolution being due to 
processing restrictions within our GIS software package (MapInfo). An average for each 
100x100m square was calculated from the initial noise data. This data was then used to 
calculate a mean noise level per LSOA (figure 3). 
INTERNOISE 2010 │ JUNE 13-16 │ LISBON │ PORTUGAL 
6 
 
 
Figure 2 – Road noise Lden for Southampton. Arrows point to parks not modelled ( 
Southampton Municipal, Riverside and Mayfield). See Table 2 for Lden value bands. 
Table 2 – Noise bands 
Grid Code Lden Level (dB) 
7  ≥ 75 
6 70.0-74.9 
5 65.0-69.9 
4 60.0-64.9 
3 55.0-59.9 
2 < 55 
 
With this data in hand it is possible to search for correlations with any deprivation index. 
However noise exposure alone (Figure 3) is not a deprivation quality, but the lack of means 
to combat noise exposure is. 
 
 
 
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7 
4 Accessibility to quiet spaces 
4.1 The need for an accessibility metric 
As it has been mentioned, the detrimental effect that noise has on the public is not taken into 
account in social deprivation indices. We propose to use the lack of access to quiet spaces 
relative to noise exposure as an indicator of deprivation. 
 
This indicator may help planners in identifying the value of Quiet Areas in the urban social 
context and may be used as a tool to implement action plans as mandated by the END. 
 
 
Figure 3 – Calculated Mean Noise Exposure at LSOA level (darkest areas are noisier, main 
parks also shown) 
 
4.2 Combined noise exposure and accessibility metric 
In order to combine noise exposure data with accessibility the distance to the nearest Quiet 
Area (either the Common or Mayfield Park) were calculated for every LSOA. 
 
The accessibility level is then computed using the following formula: 
 
 
Lacc=10log(D/Dmin)     (1) 
 
Where D is the distance to the nearest Quiet Area from the geographical centroid at each 
LSOA and Dmin is the shortest from all distances D. The quiet area accessibility indicator is 
then calculated by taking the average of Lden + Lacc for each LSOA. The results are shown in 
Figure 4. 
INTERNOISE 2010 │ JUNE 13-16 │ LISBON │ PORTUGAL 
8 
 
 
Figure 4 – Calculated quiet area accessibility indicator at LSOA level (darker areas have 
worst accessibility) 
 
 
5 Correlations with deprivation indicators 
All social data was sourced through the Office of National Statistics (ONS), from their 2007 dataset 
relating Indices of Deprivation, available at <http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk> and [5]. 
 
The correlation test used is a Spearman’s Rank Correlation (ρ) test, corrected for ties. All 
variables tested for rank correlation with the proposed quiet area accessibility indicator: 
 
Table 3 – Rank correlations with quiet area accessibility indicator 
Variable correlated against accessibility 
indicator 
ρ 
Mean exposure     0.420** 
Score of housing in poor condition 0.063 
Score of health, deprivation and disability    -0.291** 
Score of Multiple Index of Deprivation    -0.354** 
** denotes significant correlation at ρ<0.01, with a two tailed test. 
 
The correlation with mean exposure is high, perhaps, not unsurprising, given how the 
indicator has been defined. The correlation with housing might be expected to be positive, 
but this is complicated by the fact that mean exposure and deprivation are not correlated (ρ = 
-0.145), and deprivation (Figure 5) and housing condition (Figure 6) are highly significantly 
correlated (ρ = -0.486). 
 
INTERNOISE 2010 │ JUNE 13-16 │ LISBON │ PORTUGAL 
9 
 
 
Figure 5 – Index of multiple deprivation at LSOA level (darker areas have greater 
deprivation) 
 
 
Figure 6 – House in poor condition indicator at LSOA level (darker areas have worst 
condition) 
This lack of correlation is somewhat surprising at face value, yet is understandable given the 
urban development of Southampton, with relatively affluent suburbs being fringed by major 
INTERNOISE 2010 │ JUNE 13-16 │ LISBON │ PORTUGAL 
10 
roads, such as the M3, M27, and M271. Also, since distance from Mayfield Park is also 
factored into our indicator, areas with relatively poor housing, such as Woolston, possibly 
benefit from their geographical location i.e. being relatively close to a ‘quiet area’. However, 
the highly significant negative correlations the accessibility indicator with deprivation in its 
broad sense and health deprivation, suggest that there is some concern that those who are 
most deprived socially experience a les tranquil environment. 
6 Conclusions 
This paper has proposed a quiet area accessibility metric which could be used in conjunction 
with house noise insulation statistics to define a tranquillity deprivation indicator. This 
indicator could be useful to urban planners to determine areas lacking a healthy acoustic 
environment which could benefit from the creation of nearby quiet open spaces. 
 
It has been shown that the quiet area accessibility indicator has a significant correlation with 
house in poor condition indicator and the multiple deprivation index in Southampton.  
 
In future work other English urban spaces will be investigated to assess the robustness of 
the quiet area accessibility indicator and its suitability for inclusion in social deprivation 
statistics. 
 
Acknowledgments 
The authors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to Stephen Parkinson at DEFRA for 
providing the END noise exposure data for the Southampton urban Agglomeration. 
References 
[1] Noble M. et al. The English Indices of Deprivation 2007, Department for Communities 
and Local Government. 2008. 
[2] Ohrstrom E. et al., Effects of road traffic noise and benefit of access to quietness, J. 
Sound & Vib, Vol 295, 2006, pp40-59. 
[3] Shields B. M. and Dockrell J.E., The effects of environmental and classroom noise on the 
academic attainments of primary school children, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Vol 123(1), 2006, 
pp 133-143. 
[4] Research into Quiet Areas. Recommendations for identification. DEFRA. 2006. 
[5] A Study of the 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation for the Hampshire County Council 
Area. Hampshire County Council. 2008. 
 


A Study of the 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation for the Hampshire County Council Area. Hampshire County Council.

Effects of road traffic noise and benefit of access to quietness,

Research into Quiet Areas. Recommendations for identification.

The effects of environmental and classroom noise on the academic attainments of primary school children,

The English Indices of Deprivation

A Quiet Area Accessibility Metric for the Southampton Urban Agglomeration

http://ssudl.solent.ac.uk/2411/1/Quiet_area_accessibility_metric.pdf

A Quiet Area Accessibility Metric for the Southampton Urban Agglomeration

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