Noise emitted from ships: impact inside and outside the vessels

The noise generated by ships affects a wide range of receivers: crew and passengers inside the vessel, inhabitants of the coastal areas and marine fauna outside it. The time elapsed since these types of impact have been considered and the state of the art of the noise control for each of these fields is very different. The paper aims at analysing the regulatory frameworks in the various fields, underlining differences in the present level of development and suggesting possible improvements in the general approach. The paper refers to the first phase of the SILENV collaborative project (EU 7th Framework Programme).