Noise pollution is the second largest environmental health risk in Europe. Bringing noise measurement into how we manage cities will improve citizen wellbeing and grow local economies.
Challenge
The World Health Organization estimates that noise pollution costs the economy between £60 billion and £100 billion per annum.
In 2020, the European Union established SynchroniCity - a large-scale pilot IoT programme that sought to open up a global IoT market where cities and businesses could develop shared digital services to improve the lives of citizens and grow local economies.
Incorporating noise measurement and mitigation into how we manage our cities was part of that drive.
Approach
Through the NoiseAbility project, UrbanTide collected significant volumes of citizen data and in-depth user engagement data from across three cities (Edinburgh, Eindhoven and Bilbao) and made it available as open data on the uSmart data insights platform.
By linking IoT noise data we collected from sensors across these cities to other city and citizen-centric data, this provided insights into how different urban personas feel about sounds and noise acceptability levels. This unleashed a powerful predictive tool that cities can use for noise planning, linking the data to other city objectives to mitigate noise pollution.
Results
£100bn
The estimated social cost of city noise as an environmental health risk.
19
19 sensors were used in each city to collect IoT noise data.
6000
Over 6,000 citizen data points were collected in just 4 weeks.
By integrating IoT data with citizen feelings data, we can better monitor and predict the impact of noise pollution on cities and their citizens.
Our partnership vision
Our vision for the Noiseability project is to normalise the incorporation of noise measurement into how all urban spaces are managed.
By putting intelligent data at the core of city-based multilayer responses, we can make our cities more liveable and grow local economies as a result.
About Synchronicity
NoiseAbility is funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 SynchroniCity programme.
Synchronicity brings together public authorities and businesses collaborating to deploy and scale-up innovative advanced IoT-enabled city services in real-life conditions across Europe.
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.
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