Using cellphones to fight noise pollution

According to New Scientist, cellphones could soon be used to fight noise pollution.

In a bid to make cities quieter, the European Union requires member states to create noise maps of their urban areas once every five years. Rather than deploying costly sensors all over a city, the maps are often created using computer models that predict how various sources of noise, such as airports and railway stations, affect the areas around them.

Nicolas Maisonneuve of the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, France, says that those maps are not an accurate reflection of residents' exposure to noise. To get a more precise picture, Maisonneuve's team has developed NoiseTube, a downloadable software app which uses people's smartphones to monitor noise pollution. "The goal was to turn the mobile phone into an environmental sensor," says Maisonneuve.

The app records any sound picked up by the phone's microphone, along with its the GPS location. Users can label the data with extra information, such as the source of the noise, before it is transmitted to NoiseTube's server.

Read full article and more about NoiseTube on their website.

Related, sort of:

-- Cell phones to sense our environment and its pollutants (2009)

-- Cyclists' cellphones help monitor air pollution (2008)

-- Cellphone masts can measure rainfall (2006)

-- Aero Phone measures air pollution (2004)

-- Saving the World With Cell Phones (2005)

-- Cell phones could warn of gas leaks (2003)

-- Phones that detect terrorist attacks (2003)

emily | 5:44 PM | Technology |
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