Sivertun Å., Gumos A.

Noise from different sources is widely addressed as a problem for public health. Today measurements and modelling is made in special software that rarely is developed with a GIS perspective. Noise modelling in a GIS perspective means that data concerning the point, linear or surface sources for the noise and the different aspects of land surface as topography, land cover, buildings etc are able to handle in the same tool using the different analytical methods implemented in GIS. Further a GIS perspective allow us to analyse how many persons that are exposed for the noise and in countries as Sweden we have possibilities to link those data to data concerning health outcome. From the national health registers it is theoretical possible to get data concerning persons that have asked for medical help for sleeping problems or nervous disorders like concentration problems related to exposure to low frequency noise that has been reported among school children. The privacy issues and a conservative approach in the epidemiological society has so far been obstacles to perform such studies, but the technique has been investigated and proven by us in for example cases where background Radon (from geological formations containing Uranium) and addresses of children suffering from Leukeamia. We could with the GIS method define a clear correlation between exposure of Radon in the investigated cases and also normalise the cases towards the data base with addresses for every individual that lived in the Östergötland county for the last 30 years. This means a database with about 450.000 individuals. Similar studies are possible to make based on our nice zone maps already developed in GIS.