How One App Empowers Citizens to Take Control of Urban Noise Pollution



We live in very, very loud world. With cars whizzing past, construction sites pounding away, ambulances roaring around and the dull ache of idle chatter constantly bombarding the sound wall, it's easy to get overwhelmed in a noisy environment. And there's good reason for that: Although it's usually pushed into the background, noise is actually a form of pollution.

Our ears are very susceptible to noise, and any noise above 85 decibels (dBs) is considered harmful to human hearing. Just how loud is that? Well, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, we expose ourselves to at least 85 decibels of noise when we hear the sounds of city traffic. And hearing loss isn't the only potentially dangerous consequence of loud environments. The United Nations World Health Organization reports that high blood pressure, increased stress level and more frequent anxiety attacks are part of a laundry list of possible effects.

That's where NoiseTube comes in. This open-source software, founded at the Sony Computer Science Lab in Paris and now managed by the Computer Science department at Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Brussels, Belgium, helps citizens measure the noise around them to get a better sense of just how much noise pollution is in their neighborhood. But they don't need any special equipment to do so — they can just use their smartphones. Since its launch in 2008, the small project has been used by more than a thousand citizens and has collected data from more than 500 cities around the world.

Mashable spoke with NoiseTube pre-doctoral researcher Matthias Stevens to get a behind-the-scenes look at how this program aims to change the way citizens think about noise across the globe.

How it Works

According to Stevens, noise mapping has been traditionally limited to two separate methods of gathering data: running simulations via computer that creates an estimation of just how loud a city is, or installing turrets that directly measure the level of street noise in a given neighborhood. NoiseTube, which is available for iPhone, Android and Windows phones, puts real-time noise measurement technology in the palm of your hand, thanks to the phone's microphone. Stevens says that the team uses high-tech noise equipment to calibrate each kind of phone to make up for the microphone's error in order to produce a relatively accurate data set.

"We get down to an error margin below 5 dBs as long as the sound is up to 100 dBs," Stevens explains. "What this means is that the end result is less accurate than a professional sound meter, but it is enough to meaningfully compare the sound between one street or another, or a Monday morning and Sunday night."

When a user downloads NoiseTube onto his phone, the software recognizes the phone model and is able to interpret the data back to the central hub with marginal error. As a user opens the software and begins moving, NoiseTube tracks the noise in the immediate area and gauges the severity of the noise. In addition to measuring data, Stevens adds that the user is allowed to make subjective comments on how they feel the noise is affecting them or whether it's pleasant.

"We have a simple system that uses tagging to basically get people to type single words to identify what’s happening or how they’re feeling about it," Stevens says. "This is, I would say, an aspect that is largely missing in [other] noisemapping approaches."

The result is a user-controlled noise mapping experience that can measure how noisy a neighborhood is at different times. Citizens can then have a better idea of just how loud their neighborhood is, and if they are exposing themselves to harmful noises on a regular basis just by going outside.

Capturing City Noise

City noise is important, especially in Europe. Stevens says that major European cities are required to submit an accurate noise map every five years to the European Commission, but most don't keep up with how noise changes on a day-to-day basis. He explains that when more citizens use NoiseTube, they are able to understand the shifting patterns in a community's noise, day-to-day and week-to-week, over a widespread area. NoiseTube ran a three-week experiment in Antwerp, Belgium, which encouraged neighbors to track the noise in their specific area.

"What we have tried to do [in Antwerp] is organize collaborations and help people that have no experience in creation of noise maps use this tool that makes maps that are credible, [and] cover a certain area in a certain variation in time," Stevens says.

Stevens says the results of the experiment were positive, and the citizens were able to complete a full noise map of a 10-street neighborhood that accurately reflected noise simulations done by the government. That noise was also able to be put into context, so the citizens became informed about how various noise levels effect their overall health. Stevens explains that the kind of maps created by NoiseTube — when given the right volume of people — can capture variations in city noise all across the world.

"In terms of worldwide efforts, NoiseTube is open, so everyone can make an account and download software. For the data to be useful for reporting, we need a local concentration of users and a certain amount of coordination, like Antwerp."

Stevens says that the technology of NoiseTube could be used in combination with traditional noise-gathering technologies to build a richer picture of how noise effects the everyday lives of metro citizens.

The Big Picture

So, what's next for this form of noise mapping? Stevens says that the future of the NoiseTube program is focused more on the citizens than recording catalog data, especially in encouraging civic involvement. Ideally, he adds, NoiseTube would be used to motivate citizens to engage their governments about possible noise regulation, and to inspire authorities to turn to their citizens for sentiment and feedback related to the problem.

"We didn’t get into this type of research to make noise maps ourselves, but to investigate how mobile technologies can be used by citizens for mapping noise or air pollution or other spacial noise in a participatory manner," Stevens explains.

Stevens says that the goal of the project is to get as many people as possible involved with the project to uncover just how much noise pollution is around city-dwellers on a daily basis and to show just how much noise pollution regulation has been put on the back burner. He admits that it is not an easy feat to get people involved, but that the accessibility of NoiseTube should encourage people to take charge of what's invading their ears.

"It’s something that’s having big health effects on people, so giving people a tool to help assess their noise is a way that we can empower those people and help change their environment," Stevens says.

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