Assessing port noise: the ANCHOR Life approach

The main objective of the ANCHOR LIFE project (LIFE17 GIE/IT/000562) is to raise awareness, communicate and disseminate the topic of noise pollution coming from ports. The target is made of public Administrations and land management decisionmakers, port authorities, private companies in-volved in port activities, citizens living in port cities and academics. The activities of this project are focused on reducing the impact of port noise by means of three different approaches: a system of rewarding (“Figures of Merits”) tested in the port of Livorno, the design and installation of a Smart Port Noise Monitoring System in the port of Patras, and the realization of a guideline for noise map-ping activities in ports. The main goal of the paper is to report the guideline highlights and how it was applied in the assessment of the Port Expansion project of Melilla. A noise mapping activity was carried out to consider the evolution of the port in the next 30 years through three different time scenarios. The activity was carried out using the algorithms introduced by the European Directive 2015/996/EC and also assessing the zero option. Moreover, the paper reports how the Figure of Merits procedures were used within the Port Expansion project of Melilla to compare the efficiency of se-lected anti-noise measures.