University of Helsinki
Overview of Joose Helle’s MSc thesis
Exposure to noise pollution can cause various adverse health effects such as increased blood pressure and stress levels. Noise exposure has traditionally been assessed in terms of home location, as required by national and international policies. However, a substantial share of individuals’ total daily noise exposure is likely to happen while they are on the move. This evidently also affects the healthiness of active travel modes, walking or cycling, by reducing or even outweighing positive health effects of physical activity. Thus, there is a clear need for advancing exposure assessment beyond residential location to gain a true understanding of exposure profiles and their potential effects on health and well-being.
Journey-time exposure assessment can study spatially dynamic exposure to pollutants as people move through the urban environment. Furthermore, least-cost routing can be applied to find healthier paths with lower exposure levels to pollutants. This novel research field has a potential to support urban sustainability and equitability through increasing awareness of the qualities of travel environments, assessing population exposure, supporting individual mobility choices as well as planning healthier travel infrastructure throughout the urban fabric.
These tasks are not trivial. How to assess dynamic exposure to noise pollution? How to find routes with less noise than on the shortest route? How to develop a mobile navigation application for exposure-based route planning? These were the key questions I addressed in my master’s thesis: Quiet paths for people: developing routing analysis and Web GIS application, defended in May 2020 at the University of Helsinki.