The development of ICT infrastructures has facilitated the emergence of new paradigms for looking at society and the environment over the last few years. Participatory environmental sensing, i.e. directly involving citizens in environmental monitoring, is one example, which is hoped to encourage learning and enhance awareness of environmental issues. In this paper, an analysis of the behaviour of individuals involved in noise sensing is presented. Citizens have been involved in noise measuring activities through the WideNoise smartphone application. This application has been designed to record both objective (noise samples) and subjective (opinions, feelings) data. The application has been open to be used freely by anyone and has been widely employed worldwide. In addition, several test cases have been organised in European countries. Based on the information submitted by users, an analysis of emerging awareness and learning is performed. The data show that changes in the way the environment is perceived after repeated usage of the application do appear. Specifically, users learn how to recognise different noise levels they are exposed to. Additionally, the subjective data collected indicate an increased user involvement in time and a categorisation effect between pleasant and less pleasant environments.
}, author = {Becker, Martin and Caminiti, Saverio and Fiorella, Donato and Francis, Louise and Gravino, Pietro and Haklay, Mordechai (Muki) and Hotho, Andreas and Loreto, Vittorio and Mueller, Juergen and Ricchiuti, Ferdinando and Servedio, Vito D. P. and Sîrbu, Alina and Tria, Francesca}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0081638}, interhash = {52652b4fe271d8be4b96b2f692fe9519}, intrahash = {423a8aaa4eb317ee507143293205c76f}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, month = {12}, number = 12, pages = {e81638}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {Awareness and Learning in Participatory Noise Sensing}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081638}, volume = 8, year = 2013 } @article{10.1371/journal.pone.0081638, abstract = {The development of ICT infrastructures has facilitated the emergence of new paradigms for looking at society and the environment over the last few years. Participatory environmental sensing, i.e. directly involving citizens in environmental monitoring, is one example, which is hoped to encourage learning and enhance awareness of environmental issues. In this paper, an analysis of the behaviour of individuals involved in noise sensing is presented. Citizens have been involved in noise measuring activities through the WideNoise smartphone application. This application has been designed to record both objective (noise samples) and subjective (opinions, feelings) data. The application has been open to be used freely by anyone and has been widely employed worldwide. In addition, several test cases have been organised in European countries. Based on the information submitted by users, an analysis of emerging awareness and learning is performed. The data show that changes in the way the environment is perceived after repeated usage of the application do appear. Specifically, users learn how to recognise different noise levels they are exposed to. Additionally, the subjective data collected indicate an increased user involvement in time and a categorisation effect between pleasant and less pleasant environments.
}, author = {Becker, Martin and Caminiti, Saverio and Fiorella, Donato and Francis, Louise and Gravino, Pietro and Haklay, Mordechai (Muki) and Hotho, Andreas and Loreto, Vittorio and Mueller, Juergen and Ricchiuti, Ferdinando and Servedio, Vito D. P. and Sîrbu, Alina and Tria, Francesca}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0081638}, interhash = {52652b4fe271d8be4b96b2f692fe9519}, intrahash = {423a8aaa4eb317ee507143293205c76f}, journal = {PLoS ONE}, month = {12}, number = 12, pages = {e81638}, publisher = {Public Library of Science}, title = {Awareness and Learning in Participatory Noise Sensing}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0081638}, volume = 8, year = 2013 } @inproceedings{Schweizer:2012:NMI:2389148.2389157, abstract = {Noise pollution is a problem increasingly acknowledged by authorities and governments around the globe. At last year's PhoneSense we presented Noisemap, a participating sensing application to accurately measure noise pollution. Noisemap incorporated frequency calibration to overcome the limited microphone hardware. The challenge remaining is how to motivate smartphone users to sacrifice their time and battery on measuring noise. A user study was conducted with 49 users divided into three groups. As expected the average measurements taken per user increased from 402 to 3,357 as the number of incentive schemes increased. Over the course of 7 weeks the users captured more than 85, 000 measurements, measuring for more than six hours on average.}, acmid = {2389157}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, articleno = {9}, author = {Schweizer, Immanuel and Meurisch, Christian and Gedeon, Julien and B\"{a}rtl, Roman and M\"{u}hlh\"{a}user, Max}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Sensing Applications on Mobile Phones}, doi = {10.1145/2389148.2389157}, interhash = {2115b4afb0ea994189332bfd209fbee7}, intrahash = {4d5bc70c5ee9c8250f6e4e6b4e4d8518}, isbn = {978-1-4503-1778-8}, location = {Toronto, Ontario, Canada}, numpages = {5}, pages = {9:1--9:5}, publisher = {ACM}, series = {PhoneSense '12}, title = {Noisemap: multi-tier incentive mechanisms for participative urban sensing}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2389148.2389157}, year = 2012 } @inproceedings{noauthororeditor2011noisemap, editor = {Second International Workshop on Sensing Applications on Mobile Phones, ACM SenSys 2011}, interhash = {fb255bb53f64fc403f4e03cb73577bb5}, intrahash = {248ff44fcf7b397c118a33116d05326b}, title = {NoiseMap - Real-time participatory noise maps}, url = {http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/events/phonesense2011/papers/NoiseMap.pdf}, year = 2011 } @article{doi:10.1080/13504509.2013.779326, author = {Li, Chunming and Wei, Dong and Vause, Jonathan and Liu, Jianping}, doi = {10.1080/13504509.2013.779326}, eprint = {http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13504509.2013.779326}, interhash = {397604f8584c402f7c14dc2d2935baaa}, intrahash = {a5a19958a5f397b467abdabe2f8adf69}, journal = {International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology}, number = 0, pages = {1-6}, title = {Towards a societal scale environmental sensing network with public participation}, url = {http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504509.2013.779326}, volume = 0, year = 0 } @article{maisonneuve2010participatory, 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].}, author = {Maisonneuve, Nicolas and Stevens, Matthias and Ochab, Bartek}, doi = {10.3233/IP-2010-0200}, interhash = {75f1760b3c55de573fffd69fcc10548e}, intrahash = {4dbb1ce355b7249bc2f66ed4b2126bab}, journal = {Information Polity}, month = jan, number = 1, pages = {51--71}, publisher = {IOS Press}, title = {Participatory noise pollution monitoring using mobile phones}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.3233/IP-2010-0200}, volume = 15, year = 2010 } @article{kanjo2010noisespy, abstract = {In this paper we present the design, implementation, evaluation, and user experiences of the NoiseSpy application, our sound sensing system that turns the mobile phone into a low-cost data logger for monitoring environmental noise. It allows users to explore a city area while collaboratively visualizing noise levels in real-time. The software combines the sound levels with GPS data in order to generate a map of sound levels that were encountered during a journey. We report early findings from the trials which have been carried out by cycling couriers who were given Nokia mobile phones equipped with the NoiseSpy software to collect noise data around Cambridge city. Indications are that, not only is the functionality of this personal environmental sensing tool engaging for users, but aspects such as personalization of data, contextual information, and reflection upon both the data and its collection, are important factors in obtaining and retaining their interest.}, acmid = {1831011}, address = {Hingham, MA, USA}, author = {Kanjo, Eiman}, doi = {10.1007/s11036-009-0217-y}, interhash = {12b29df257d71dfd37193d6b4665004e}, intrahash = {387ebc6472794f598d07256a45f3d9b7}, issn = {1383-469X}, issue_date = {August 2010}, journal = {Mobile Networks and Applications}, month = aug, number = 4, numpages = {13}, pages = {562--574}, publisher = {Kluwer Academic Publishers}, title = {NoiseSPY: A Real-Time Mobile Phone Platform for Urban Noise Monitoring and Mapping}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11036-009-0217-y}, volume = 15, year = 2010 }