TQA-1: The 2010 NAE Technology for a Quieter America (TQA) report and ten years of workshops

Abstract

The Technology for a Quieter America project began in February, 2005 with a request from the project office of the National Academy of Engineering to produce a consensus report on the state of the technology in noise control engineering. A committee was appointed and a series of workshops on the various TQA topics were held. The TQA report was published by the National Academies Press in 2010. After the report was completed, it became clear that additional studies on specific topics covered in the TQA report would be valuable. These were not to be traditional consensus studies but workshops organized on an ad hoc basis and approved by the NAE project office. The first workshop was in 2012 on noise from motorcycles and the most recent workshop held in 2020 was on aerial mobility which included drones and air taxis. In all, ten reports have been published and are available as public information documents from the Institute of Noise Control Engineering. In 2016, the National Academy of Engineering formalized the process for development of workshops in the form of member-initiated activities. There is currently a formal process for the submission and approval of proposed projects.