TY - JOUR
T1 - A Study of the Accuracy of Mobile Technology for Measuring Urban Noise Pollution in Large-scale Participatory Sensing Campaigns
AU - Aumond, Pierre
AU - Lavandier, Catherine
AU - Ribeiro, Carlos
AU - Gonzalez Boix, Elisa
AU - Kambona, Kennedy
AU - D'hondt, Ellie
AU - Delaitre, Pauline
PY - 2017/2
Y1 - 2017/2
N2 - The study reports on the relevancy and accuracy of using mobile phones in participatory noise pollution monitoring studies in an urban context. During one year, 60 participants used the same smartphone model to measure environmental noise at 28 different locations in Paris. All measurements were performed with the same calibrated application. The sound pressure level was recorded from the microphone every second during a 10-min period. The participants frequently measured the evolution of the sound level near two standard monitoring sound stations (in a square and near a boulevard), which enables the assessment of the accuracy and relevancy of collected acoustic measurements. The instantaneous A-weighting sound level, energy indicators such as L
A,eq, L
A10, L
A50 or L
A90 and event indicators such as the number of noise events exceeding a certain threshold L
α (NNEL ⩾ L
α) were measured and compared with reference measurements. The results show that instantaneous sound levels measured with mobile phones correlate very well (r > 0.9, p < 0.05) with sound levels measured with a class 1 reference sound level meter with a root mean square error smaller than 3 dB(A). About 10% of the measurements for the boulevard location (respectively 20% for the square) were inaccurate (r < 0.3, p < 0.05). Nevertheless, mobile phone measurements are in agreement for the L
A50 and the L
A90 acoustic indicators with the fixed station (4-m high) measurements, with a median deviation smaller than 1.5 dB(A) for the boulevard (respectively 3 dB(A) for the square).
AB - The study reports on the relevancy and accuracy of using mobile phones in participatory noise pollution monitoring studies in an urban context. During one year, 60 participants used the same smartphone model to measure environmental noise at 28 different locations in Paris. All measurements were performed with the same calibrated application. The sound pressure level was recorded from the microphone every second during a 10-min period. The participants frequently measured the evolution of the sound level near two standard monitoring sound stations (in a square and near a boulevard), which enables the assessment of the accuracy and relevancy of collected acoustic measurements. The instantaneous A-weighting sound level, energy indicators such as L
A,eq, L
A10, L
A50 or L
A90 and event indicators such as the number of noise events exceeding a certain threshold L
α (NNEL ⩾ L
α) were measured and compared with reference measurements. The results show that instantaneous sound levels measured with mobile phones correlate very well (r > 0.9, p < 0.05) with sound levels measured with a class 1 reference sound level meter with a root mean square error smaller than 3 dB(A). About 10% of the measurements for the boulevard location (respectively 20% for the square) were inaccurate (r < 0.3, p < 0.05). Nevertheless, mobile phone measurements are in agreement for the L
A50 and the L
A90 acoustic indicators with the fixed station (4-m high) measurements, with a median deviation smaller than 1.5 dB(A) for the boulevard (respectively 3 dB(A) for the square).
KW - Crowdsourcing
KW - Mobile phones
KW - Participatory sensing
KW - Sound level monitoring
KW - Urban studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84979681288&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.apacoust.2016.07.011
DO - 10.1016/j.apacoust.2016.07.011
M3 - Article
SN - 0003-682X
VL - 117
SP - 219
EP - 226
JO - Applied Acoustics
JF - Applied Acoustics
ER -