Edinburgh CitySounds


Sensing for biodiversity in urban green spaces

The CitySounds project is exploring and celebrating the richness of sounds in the city, benefiting from recent innovations in digital technology and network infrastructure. It is focussing on how biotic (living organisms like plants and animals) and anthropogenic (human activity) sounds captured in the Meadows, a central urban greenspace of Edinburgh, can inform community groups and citizens about biodiversity and health and well-being, as well as provide a unique resource for artists and data scientists. Wide-frequency audio is being captured in near real-time for secure privacy processing and analysis. The team has constructed an Audio Capture Device that is able to pick up the rich array of biotic and anthropogenic sounds in both the audible and ultrasonic range.

Anonymised audio data will be made available to registered OrganiCity experimenters. This project is led by Edinburgh Living Lab, a city-wide collaboration founded by the City of Edinburgh Council and the University of Edinburgh.

Edinburgh CitySounds is funded by OrganiCity, a service for experimentation that explores how citizens, businesses and city authorities can work together to create digital solutions to urban challenges. OrganiCity experiments take place in cities across Europe.