Mapping Urban Environmental Noise Using Smartphones - PubMed Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Oct 13;16(10):1692.
doi: 10.3390/s16101692.

Mapping Urban Environmental Noise Using Smartphones

Jinbo Zuo  1 , Hao Xia  2 , Shuo Liu  3 , Yanyou Qiao  4
Affiliations

Mapping Urban Environmental Noise Using Smartphones

Jinbo Zuo et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Noise mapping is an effective method of visualizing and accessing noise pollution. In this paper, a noise-mapping method based on smartphones to effectively and easily measure environmental noise is proposed. By using this method, a noise map of an entire area can be created using limited measurement data. To achieve the measurement with certain precision, a set of methods was designed to calibrate the smartphones. Measuring noise with mobile phones is different from the traditional static observations. The users may be moving at any time. Therefore, a method of attaching an additional microphone with a windscreen is proposed to reduce the wind effect. However, covering an entire area is impossible. Therefore, an interpolation method is needed to achieve full coverage of the area. To reduce the influence of spatial heterogeneity and improve the precision of noise mapping, a region-based noise-mapping method is proposed in this paper, which is based on the distribution of noise in different region types tagged by volunteers, to interpolate and combine them to create a noise map. To validate the effect of the method, a comparison of the interpolation results was made to analyse our method and the ordinary Kriging method. The result shows that our method is more accurate in reflecting the local distribution of noise and has better interpolation precision. We believe that the proposed noise-mapping method is a feasible and low-cost noise-mapping solution.

Keywords: noise map; participatory sensing; smartphone; spatial interpolation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Skeleton of the noise-mapping prototype system.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Calibration steps. (a) Raw time series from sound pressure level data from the SLM and phones; (b) Time series after resampling; (c) Time series after alignment; (d) Time series after calibration.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Steps in creating a noise map using the measurement and spatial data.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Diagrammatic sketch of steps of RNMM. (a) Create the fishnet with labels; (b) Nearest measurement and split into different region types; (c) Interpolation for different types; (d) Predict and combine the region types.
Figure 5
Figure 5
BY-LM10 microphone with a lapel clip and a foam windscreen.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Experimental field: an office park of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (from Google Map).
Figure 7
Figure 7
Comparison of the time series from HTC butterfly with and without an additional microphone.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Time series of the measurements under different conditions: (a) walking and (b) cycling.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Noise maps of the experimental field during the peak hour (8:00–9:00) obtained by different methods: (a) RNMM and (b) Kriging.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Noise maps of the experimental field during the off-peak hour (21:00–22:00) obtained by different methods: (a) RNMM and (b) Kriging.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. European Environment Agency . Noise in Europe 2014. Publications Office of the European Union; Luxembourg: 2014.
    1. Lewis R.C., Gershon R.R.M., Neitzel R.L. Estimation of permanent noise-induced hearing loss in an urban setting. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2013;47:6393–6399. doi: 10.1021/es305161z. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hunashal R.B., Patil Y.B. Assessment of noise pollution indices in the city of Kolhapur, India. Procedia Soc. Behav. Sci. 2012;37:448–457. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.03.310. - DOI
    1. Ausejo M., Recuero M., Asensio C., Pavón I., López J.M. Study of precision, deviations and uncertainty in the design of the strategic noise map of the macrocenter of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Environ. Model. Assess. 2009;15:125–135. doi: 10.1007/s10666-009-9191-9. - DOI
    1. Butler D. Noise management: Sound and vision. Nature. 2004;427:480–481. doi: 10.1038/427480a. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources