Longitudinal study on community response to noise in Vietnam and Kumamoto
Hiroyuki Tetsuya, Yasuhiro Murakami and Takashi Yano

Although a number of socio-acoustic surveys on community response to transportation noise have been conducted in developed countries thus far, only a few such surveys have been conducted in developing countries such as those in Southeast Asia. In order to remedy this situation and to contribute to Vietnamese and global noise policies, socio-acoustic surveys have been conducted in two cities of Vietnam since 2005. Since the first express railway line, Tokaido Shinkansen, was opened between Tokyo and Osaka in 1964, high-speed railway networks have been developed not only in Japan but also in Europe and some East Asian countries. The construction of the Kyushu Shinkansen Line began around the Kumamoto Station area in 2004. By the time the construction of the Shinkansen and the conventional railway lines is completed in 2016, the positions of the both lines will have changed, and the exposures of the houses to the noise from the railways will have altered accordingly. Therefore, in this paper, we present two ongoing longitudinal studies on community response to noise. The first study is a socio-acoustic survey on community response to aircraft, road traffic, and railway noises in four cities of Vietnam: Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, and Danang. The second study is on community response to the step changes in noise exposures in Kumamoto.

Key words: community response to noise, noise policy, Vietnam, Shinkansen, step change in noise exposure