The socio-economic impact of noise: a method for assessing noise annoyance.

Norwegian authorities have developed and adopted a method for assessing the magnitude of noise impact on a community in quantitative terms. The method takes into account all levels of noise annoyance experienced by all the residents in an area and transforms these data into a single quantity that can also be expressed in monetary terms. This method is contrary to other commonly used assessment methods where only a certain fraction of the impacted people, e.g. those "highly annoyed," is considered.