Regulations, guidelines, and standards regarding environmental noise in Indonesia

With all the development, industrial activities and community activities in Indonesia, noise has become one of the problems that arises in some places in Indonesia. Indonesia already has some regulations, guidelines, and standards to safeguard the noise levels. This is important mainly to support a healthy environment for the people, and also to improve budgeting certainty of projects that will produce noise during their operations.

The following are the regulations, standards and guidelines related with environmental noise in Indonesia.

Environmental Noise Regulations

Regulations regarding environmental noise generally can be categorized into two types which are emission regulation and immission regulation. Emission regulations regulate how much noise can a noise source produces noise, while immission regulation regulates how much noise can a receiver or area receives noise.

Examples of noise emission regulations in Indonesia are:

• Decree of Minister of Environment and Forestry No. 56 year 2019 (P.56/MENLHK/SETJEN/KUM.1/10/2019) regarding noise limits of new types of motorized vehicles and in production M category, N category, and L category.
• Decree of Minister of Transportation of Republic of Indonesia No. PM 62, year 2021 regarding civil aviation safety section 36 regarding noise standard dan type certification and aircraft airworthiness

The two ministerial decrees above regulate how much noise can be produced by vehicles that are used on road and aircraft that can operate within Indonesian territory.

The regulation that regulates environmental noise level at the receiver is:

• Decree of Minister of Environment No. 48 year 1996 about noise level limits

The decree states the noise limits that are allowed for the receiver according to its function – for example for residential area, the noise limit is 55 dBA and for industrial area 70 dBA. More details on the following link: https://www.konsultasi-akustik.com/en/environmental-noise-measurement/

Beside the regulations above, there are other requirement such as one written on Government Regulation (PP) No. 36 year 2005 regarding implementation rules of the Law No. 28 year 2002 regarding buildings. One of the points require noise reduction means for toll roads in residential area or existing city centers.

Guidelines regarding Environmental Noise

Beside the regulation, there are some technical guidelines that are written by Ministry of Public Works as follows:

• Technical guidelines Ditjen Bina Marga No. 36 year 1999: Noise barrier planning guidelines
  In these guidelines, criteria to categorize area as safe, moderate and high risk are given. Moreover, the guidelines also state measurement techniques for measurement beside road and common type, shape and material of noise barriers.
• Construction and building guidelines Pd T-10-2004-B: Road traffic noise prediction.

These guidelines adopt calculations from Calculation of Road Traffic Noise (CoRTN, UK, 1998) which contain noise calculation method based on traffic volume and speed. There are also corrections for heavy vehicle percentage, speed, gradient and road surface. From this calculation, propagation to receiver can be calculated considering distance, screening, reflection and angle of view.

• Construction and building guidelines Pd T-16-2005-B: Mitigation of road traffic noise

The guidelines lay out methods to mitigate noise from traffic which is based on measurement (which are written on Permen LH No. 48 year 1996 and guidelines No.36 year 1999 above) and can also be based on predictions (Following construction and building guidelines Pd T-10-2004-B)

Environmental Noise Standards

Beside the regulations and guidelines, there are Indonesian National Standard (SNI) document that are written by National Standardization Body (BSN) that are related to environmental noise:

• SNI 19-6878-2002 – Road traffic noise test L10 and Leq
  This standard contains test method which state testing procedure and data processing steps to calculate L_A to L₁₀ and L_eq
• SNI 8427:2017 – Pengukuran tingkat kebisingan lingkungan
  This standard contains measurement method that is similar to Kepmen LH No.48 year 1996 which is to measure noise samples for 10 minutes across 24 hours period. Noise levels then can be calculated based on its time slice which are Ls (daytime noise), Lm (nighttime noise), and Lsm (day-night noise, with 5 dB penalty for nighttime).