Please login first
The Design of an Environmental Noise Labeling App for Citizen Participation in Smart Cities
1 , 1 , * 2
1  GTM–Grup de Recerca en Tecnologies Mèdia, La Salle – Universitat Ramon Llull. c/Quatre Camins, 30, 08022 Barcelona, Spain
2  HER - Human Environment Research, La Salle - URL
Academic Editor: Francisco Falcone

Abstract:

Urban acoustic environment is composed of a great variety of sounds, whose effects citizen are mainly unaware of, despite medical studies showing that urban noise affects quality of life and health, causing from sleep disturbances to cardiovascular. The development and deployment of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) presents new ways to face the urban acoustic challenges in the context of a smart city. The improvement of the quality of life of the citizens cannot be limited to measuring the equivalent levels of noise in the streets, but should also identify the type of noise source and its impact on the overall noise measurement. For this purpose, the collection of noise sources information requires the application of many techniques, including the recording and labeling of noise events. The latter are tasks that are mostly performed manually by experts, being very time-consuming. To improve this task and taking advantage of the rise of new technologies, in this work we propose the design of a game using a mobile application to encourage citizens' participation in research, raising awareness of the problems generated by noise and helping experts in the work of pre-labeling sounds for later analysis. We detail the envisioned mechanics of the proposed game, its dynamics, and its design.

Keywords: soundscape; acoustic event; labelling; citizen; mobile app; noise
Top