what you are looking at

Cyprus's official strategic noise maps, from the 2022 reporting round of the EU Environmental Noise Directive. They are modelled with the CNOSSOS-EU method, not measured with microphones.

what "all day" and "at night" mean

"All day" is Lden — a 24-hour level that adds 5 dB to the evening and 10 dB to the night, because the same sound annoys more after dark. "At night" is Lnight, the plain average between 23:00 and 07:00.

how a tap is answered

Every tap reads a single pixel of the zoom-16 tile under your finger — 1.96 m on the ground. The colour is the answer; there is no second source of truth.

who recommends the limits

The World Health Organization, in its 2018 environmental noise guidelines: 53 dB all day and 45 dB at night for road traffic, 45 and 40 for aircraft. They are recommendations, not legal limits.

why industry gets no verdict

The World Health Organization recommends no level for industrial noise. Inventing one would be the most authoritative-looking lie on the page, so industry gets levels and nothing else.

why three separate sources

Roads, industry and aircraft are modelled separately and decibels do not add up like ordinary numbers, so there is no combined level — and we will not invent one.

where the map has answers

Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos with their suburbs — that is what the government modelled. Blank means no data — not quiet.

and where it has none

Everywhere else: the motorways between the cities were not modelled at all, and neither was the countryside. Tap a blank spot and the card says it outright — not in the government noise model. That is not the same as quiet.

what the people figures count

The exposure figures start at 45 dB; quieter homes are not counted in them. So the percentage is a share of the people in the published figures, not of the city.

credits

Strategic Noise Maps 2022 © Republic of Cyprus, Department of Environment, CC BY 4.0, modified · CNOSSOS-EU (Directive 2002/49/EC) · Basemap © OpenFreeMap / OpenMapTiles / OpenStreetMap contributors