Sonyc

Abstract

contributed articles NOISE IS UNWANTED or harmful sound from environmental sources, including traffic, construction, industrial, and social activity. Noise pollution is one of the topmost quality-of-life concerns for urban residents in the U.S., with more than 70 million people nationwide exposed to noise levels beyond the limit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers harmful. 12 Such levels have proven effects on health, including sleep disruption, hypertension, heart disease, and hearing loss. 5,11,12 In addition, there is evidence of harmful effects on educational performance, with studies showing noise pollution causing learning and cognitive impairment in children, resulting in BY JUAN P. BELLO, CLAUDIO SILVA, ODED NOV, R. LUKE DUBOIS, ANISH ARORA, JUSTIN SALAMON, CHARLES MYDLARZ, AND HARISH DORAISWAMY key insights ˽ Public exposure to noise is a growing concern in cities, leading to substantial health, educational and economic costs, but noise is ephemeral and invisible, making it dificult for city agencies to monitor it effectively. ˽ An interdisciplinary effort explores new ways to use both fixed and mobile sensors, with output annotated by citizen scientists, for training novel machine-listening models and analyzing spatiotemporal noise patterns. ˽ The resulting fine-grain and aggregate analytics layers help public agencies monitor the local environment and intervene to mitigate noise pollution.

Aggregate Impact of Anomalous Noise Events on the WASN-Based Computation of Road Traffic Noise Levels in Urban and Suburban Environments

“…Finally, it is worth mentioning that a couple of WASN-based projects have recently incorporated the detection of acoustic events in urban and suburban environments in the environmental noise monitoring pipeline. To that effect, the SONYC project [31] has developed a representative dataset with diverse sounds of interest, using the data gathered from the 56 sensors deployed in different neighborhoods of New York, considering up to 10 different common urban sound sources from the urban soundscape (highly frequent in urban noise complaints). The UrbanSound dataset was created after artificially mixing the events coming from Freesound with the background noise collected in the project [16].…”

“…The so-called Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) have become an alternative to the creation of noise maps using real-life data, since they allow the ubiquitous monitoring of environmental noise [22][23][24]. During the last decade, several WASNs have been deployed in different smart cities such as Barcelona [25], Algemesí [26], Pisa [27], Monza [28], Halifax [29] and Milan and Rome [30] in Europe, or New York city [31], to name a few. In this WASN-based approach, the traditional manual cleaning of the Anomalous Noise Events (ANEs) on the noise pattern [32] becomes unfeasible due to the huge volume of data that have to be processed in real time [13].…”

“…To address this issue, some projects have started incorporating acoustic event detection techniques within the WASN-based noise monitoring pipeline. The Sounds of New York City (SONYC) project includes the real-time identification of 10 common classes of urban sound sources [31] through a machine listening system trained after artificially mixing the events with background noise in the UrbanSound dataset [16]. Moreover, the DYNAMAP project aims at developing a WASN-based dynamic noise mapping system to monitor the acoustic impact of road infrastructures through the creation of noise maps in real time [30].…”

Wireless Sensor Networks for Noise Measurement and Acoustic Event Recognitions in Urban Environments

“…The data captured by the sensor network was transferred to a central server for data post-processing and a web-based application allows for various real-time visualization of noise distribution. The SONYC project [17] deployed 56 low-cost acoustic sensors across New York City to monitor urban noise and perform a multilabel classification of urban sound sources in real time. Obviously, the combination of environmental noise monitoring and acoustic events recognition are of great significance to analyze the noise pollution and the quality of living environments, raising civic consciousness and formulating corresponding noise reduction strategies.…”

Mapping the Sound Environment of Andorra and Escaldes-Engordany by Means of a 3D City Model Platform

“…There are other alternatives such as the DYNAMAPproject [29], which has deployed two pilots, one in Milan [16] and one in Rome [30], evaluating the noise coming from road infrastructures, and, after integrating the information coming from all the nodes from the WASN, the data were available for the public by means of a GIS platform [31]. Other projects under development, such as the Sounds of New York City project [32], have deployed 56 low-cost acoustic nodes around the city with the final goal of both monitoring the urban noise, as well as performing a real-time multi-label classification, despite not being online in the acoustic nodes. Most of the other projects associated with the monitoring of noise and air pollutants developed the concept of a noise map, which is a precise visualization throughout time variations, but cannot assume the integration of other information rather than the noise level, represented by the equivalent level (L Aeq ) or another parameter associated with the Sound Pressure Level (SPL), and none of them by means of a 3D platform.…”