Participatory noise mapping
Ellie D’Hondt, Matthias Stevens · UCL Discovery (University College London) · 2011
Participatory sensing allows for a person-centric approach to gathering environmental measurement data with, in principle, high gran- ularity in space and time. Here we report on a citizen science experiment for noise mapping a 1 km2 area in the city of Antwerp using NoiseTube, a participatory sensing framework for monitoring ambient noise. At the technical side, we set up measuring equipment in accordance with offi- cial norms insofar as they apply, also carrying out extensive calibration experiments. At the citizen side, we collaborated with up to 10 volunteers from a citizen-led Antwerp-based action group. From the data gathered we construct purely measurement-based noise maps of the targeted area with error margins of about 5dB, comparable to those of official simulation-based noise maps.