The impact of noise on environment and human health is causing increasing public concern, and therefore concern of political creators in European Union. In 2011. experts from workgroups established by WHO (World Health Organization) regional office for Europe presented a report that uses available data and summarizes collected evidence to establish cause-effect relations between noise and specific repercussions on health. The report was used to provide a reliable support to policy makers and their advisors in bringing assessments on health risks caused by environmental noise. These effects include cardiovascular diseases, intellectual disabilities, sleep disorders, tinnitus, and skin irritations. Even using conservative assumptions in calculations, report suggests that the number of lost lifetime years (DALY: Disability-Adjusted Life Years) caused by environmental noise in member states of European Union approaches 61000 years from ischemic heart disease, 45000 years from child intellectual disabilities, 903000 years from sleeping disorders, 22000 years from tinnitus and 654000 years from noise caused irritations. Furthermore, results also suggest more than 1 million years of healthy lifetime are lost because of noise induced by traffic.

However, increasing awareness on cause-effect relations between noise and health has motivated governments around the world to set additional measures on limiting the problem of environmental noise. That implies reducing limits on noise production, as well as improvements on noise emitting technical products, with emphasis on industrial machines and transport. Noise emission is closely related to vibrations of specific structural parts. Therefore, to avoid expensive and long-lasting iterations for noise reduction of these structures, new innovative methods are needed. Moreover, these methods should imply precise goal definitions in the early stages of the project, and not just ad-hoc solutions of emerged problems. Hence, modern technical solutions and better understanding of fundamental physical concepts in vibroacoustics are required to protect residents from excessive noise and vibrations. In addition, it is of vital importance for Croatian community as well as economy to cultivate relevant engineering disciplines and to educate experts in the targeted subject. Consequently, it is necessary to integrate top notch scientific research with engineering doctoral degrees in the fields of noise and vibrations.