Short answers, pulled from the story.
NOiSE is a Japanese manga by Tsutomu Nihei in which a young police officer named Susono Musubi investigates child abductions in a dystopian subterranean city. The series serves as a prequel to Nihei's ten-volume work Blame!, revealing early details about the Megastructure's origins and the beginnings of Silicon Life.
Yes, NOiSE is a prequel to Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei. It offers information about the Megastructure's origins and initial size, and introduces Silicon Life and a toned-down version of the Gravitational Beam Emitter, which appear in different forms in the later Blame! series.
NOiSE was serialized in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine from the 10th of February 2000 to the 10th of May 2001. Kodansha collected the chapters into a single tankōbon volume released on the 20th of October 2001.
Tokyopop released the English-language edition of NOiSE in North America on the 11th of December 2007. Kodansha USA later issued a digital re-release on the 28th of June 2016, and a print edition on the 29th of November 2022.
The NOiSE tankōbon volume includes Blame, a one-shot prototype for the Blame! series. It originally appeared in the October 1995 issue of Monthly Afternoon, predating the NOiSE serialization by several years.
NOiSE was written and illustrated by Tsutomu Nihei and serialized in Kodansha's seinen manga magazine. It ran from February 2000 to May 2001.