We keep an eye on issues around the world that affect people and property in the built environment.
Continuity of Evidence: Environmental Monitoring Through an El Niño Winter On 3 September 2026 the World Meteorological Organization issued its most unequivocal El Niño update to date. The event is already established and is forecast to intensify to a very strong event, peaking towards the …
What Your Open-Plan Office Sounds Like to the People Working In It It’s back to school, back to the office, and back to a full building. All summer the place ran half-empty and sounded fine. Now everyone’s in at once, and the room that felt …
Beyond the Decibel: Why Soundscape Thinking Belongs in Urban Design For most of its history, environmental noise has been treated as a number to be kept below a limit. A development is modelled, a threshold is set, a level is measured, and the scheme either …
The Bass Travels Furthest: Monitoring Low-Frequency Noise to Keep Your Festival and Its Neighbours on Good Terms As every festival organiser will know, the complaints that arrive during a headline set rarely come from inside the arena. They come from a housing estate half a …
Top of the Queue: What Critical Infrastructure Designation Means for Environmental Performance On 24 July 2026, the Government designated the first nine projects and programmes as critical infrastructure under the Critical Infrastructure Act 2026. The designations, approved on the recommendation of Minister for Public Expenditure, …
When the heat is on, so is the dust: managing construction emissions during a heatwave As a heatwave settles over much of Europe this week – Ireland included – site teams are watching temperatures climb well above the seasonal norm. Weather services have issued high-temperature …
Ireland’s WHO Healthy Cities Designations: What Gets Measured Gets Managed On 16 June 2026, Minister for Public Health, Wellbeing and the National Drugs Strategy Jennifer Murnane O’Connor TD welcomed formal WHO European Healthy Cities designations for Carlow, Cork and Waterford, alongside national network designation for …
Off Track for 2030: What the EPA’s Latest Projections Mean for the Built Environment On 27 May 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency published its Greenhouse Gas Emission Projections 2025–2055. The headline is a difficult one for everyone working on Ireland’s climate transition: even with full implementation …
Listening to the People’s Park: How Soundscape Science Helped Designate Ireland’s Newest Quiet Area In March 2026, Limerick’s People’s Park became Ireland’s first Quiet Area outside Dublin — and the first anywhere in the country to be designated using a citizen science approach. Sonitus Systems …
SONITUS SYSTEMS: Guide to Noise Management for Event Organisers As every event manager will know, effective noise management is a core requirement for delivering compliant, well-run events. It supports licensing, protects community relations, and provides assurance to stakeholders. In fact, done right, it becomes an …