Industry, innovation and infrastructure
Investments in infrastructure including transport, energy, communication and IT are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. Fulfilment of wider SDGs such as growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes are strongly linked to investment in infrastructure.
As will be discussed in a little more detail below (see SDG 11), noise is often an unwanted (and innovation-limiting) by-product of infrastructure developments. However, the integration of noise measurement as part of the infrastructure can lead to efficiency and sustainability benefits that are normally not economically viable with conventional instrumentation. However, this type of innovation requires IEC TC 29 to develop new types of specification standards that allow for flexibility in the configuration and calibration of the noise measurement system, without compromising the quality of the yielded data. Indeed, such developments have already been initiated with the work on modular instrumentation.