Odour control strategies for a sustainable nuisances action plan

Different land uses, infrastructures, industrial activities and residential patterns of developed cities expose simultaneously people to several annoying sources.

Over recent years, the European Union has provided several tools to harmonize noise mapping methodologies and relative Noise Action Plans through directives. Unfortunately, the same effort has not been made for the harmonization of approaches of other annoying sources such as odours. As a consequence, each European Member State has defined its own direct or indirect approach to limit odour impacts.

The most common approach to deal with noise impact is the use of priority indices to highlight areas that are sensitive to both noise and, generally, odour impacts. The aim of the present research is to provide a brief review of the most widely used European strategies in noise action plans as well as try to extend the approaches to the definition of a nuisance action plan, capable of controlling both odour and noise.

The analysis underlines that is possible to define the degree of sensitivity of areas according to population, land uses, levels of exposures and/or distance from the annoying sources. Nuisance acceptability levels are then definable according to the sensitivity degree of the locations.