Participatory noise pollution monitoring using mobile phones

Issue title: Government 2.0: Making Connections between citizens, data and government

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Maisonneuve, Nicolas^a | Stevens, Matthias^{b; *} | Ochab, Bartek^a

Affiliations: [a] Sony Computer Science Lab Paris, 6, rue Amyot, FR75005 Paris, France | [b] BrusSence group, Software Languages Lab and AI Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B1050 Brussels, Belgium | City University of New York, College of Staten Island | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México | University of Southern California – Information Science Institute

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel.: +32 2 629 1353; Fax: +32 2 629 3525; E-mail: mstevens@vub.ac.be

Abstract: Noise pollution is a major problem in cities around the world. The current methods to assess it neglect to represent the real exposure experienced by the citizens themselves, and therefore could lead to wrong conclusions and a biased representations. In this paper we present a novel approach to monitor noise pollution involving the general public. Using their mobile phones as noise sensors, we provide a low cost solution for the citizens to measure their personal exposure to noise in their everyday environment and participate in the creation of collective noise maps by sharing their geo-localized and annotated measurements with the community. Our prototype, called NoiseTube, can be found online [1].

Keywords: Environmental policy, pollution measurement, participatory sensing, citizen science, mobile phones, Web 2.0

DOI: 10.3233/IP-2010-0200

Journal: Information Polity, vol. 15, no. 1-2, pp. 51-71, 2010