SILENCE aims at developing an integrated system of methodologies and technologies for an efficient control of urban traffic noise. "Integrated system" means the combined consideration of city authorities, individual traffic (on road) and mass transport (on rail and road) with a holistic treatment of all traffic noise facets: urban noise scenarios, individual noise sources (vehicles), traffic management, noise perception and annoyance. This sub-project considers the integral design and maintenance of lower noise road surfaces in urban areas. Particular attention is given to surfacing technologies that are appropriate for use in congested streets containing road features such as inspection covers or suffer from frequent interventions due to sub-surface street works. Also new surface types will be developed for use on roads for medium to high speed traffic with speeds of 50 to 100 km/h, which are typical for city ring roads and city arterial roads carrying heavy traffic close to often populated living areas. The sub-project also includes developing technologies for ensuring that low noise surfaces maintain their cost/effective acoustic performance through their lifetime. Equipment and procedures for determining and classifying the influence of road surface noise in the urban environment is important to optimise the use of low-noise pavements in an asset management evaluation of urban road networks and therefore play an important part in the sub-project. As the materials technology is advancing around Europe, it is important the issue of novel materials are considered in the sub-project to further promote the development and use of new and innovative materials for low-noise roads. The innovative part of sub-project F is to develop, monitor, classifying and maintain pavements to be used in urban areas, which in their whole lifetime provide an optimised cost/effective reduction of the tyre/road noise in urban areas.