An aim of  Directive 2002/49/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, relating to the assessment and management of environmental noise (END) is the determination of exposure to environmental noise through noise mapping, by method of assessment common to the Member States.

The Directive shall apply to environmental noise to which humans are exposed in particular in built-up areas, in public parks or other quiet areas in an agglomeration, i.e. an urbanised area having a population in excess of 100.000 persons, like Florence Municipality territory.

This section provides interactive access to noise maps for the Florence agglomeration by noise source (road, rail and airport). The number of people exposed to the different noise levels from each source and the number of annoyed people has also been calculated. A population exposure chart showing these information can be viewed in the Documentation section (only in Italian).

Data on noise mapping are presented in terms of the noise indicators requested by the END:
- L_DEN (day-evening-night level) is the 24 hours L_eq, but with a 5 dB weighting for evening and a 10 dB weighting for night;
- L_night is the night time noise indicator.

Italian noise indicators are also used.

The noise maps are only intended to be used for strategic assessment of noise levels in a large area. They should not be used to represent local or transitory noise like neighbourhood or public activities noise.

Italian version