SONYC ieSoSC summer program

Summer 2018 saw the initial SONYC ieSoSC program, held over 4 weeks through July and August. Organized in conjunction with NYU Tandon Centre for K-12 STEM Education, this was an unbelievable experience during which we introduced 24 middle school students from diverse backgrounds, and three New York public school teachers (who helped us develop and deliver the content), to the research and concerns that underpin and motivate SONYC. In this post we briefly present just a few activities from amongst the many highlights.
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SONYC working with Downtown Brooklyn Alliance

SONYC are partnering with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), a not-for-profit that manages three Business Improvement Districts in the area, to monitor noise pollution as part of a new “Living Lab” initiative. DBP president Regina Myrer said in a statement, “Smart city technology is making communities around the world safer, cleaner and more beautiful places to live, and the Living Lab program brings new, data-driven solutions that will improve the quality of life here in Downtown Brooklyn, and potentially to other cities.” SONYC sensors will be operating from several sites along the Fulton Mall. DBP believe that noise pollution is one of the biggest quality of life issues in neighborhoods, and the goal of the partnership is to provide data to back up the complaints.

Downtown Brooklyn Partnership

SONYC featured in Popular Science

SONYC P.I. Juan Bello is interviewed in an article for Popular Science covering scientists’ approaches to noise pollution. In the interview he discusses why noise is tricky to deal with because, unlike water or air pollution, it leaves no traces behind in the environment, meaning that when people complain about evening construction noise, it can take days for the city to send an inspector to the site—by which time, the noise has probably stopped. With sensors, he explains, “You can actually go back in time and locate occurrences that justify those complaints”.

Popular Science – These scientists think peace and quiet should be a human right

SONYC presenting at Smart Cities Connect

SONYC will be one of NSF funded smart cities and communities of the future projects presenting and demonstrating our work at the sixth annual US Ignite Application Summit, co-located with the Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo. The event takes place on March 27th at the Kansas City Convention Center.

Further details can be found at: https://www.nsf.gov/news/

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New Publication: Investigating the Effect of Sound-Event Loudness on Crowdsourced Audio Annotations

Our paper “Investigating the Effect of Sound-Event Loudness on Crowdsourced Audio Annotations” has been accepted to IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Calgary, Canada, April 2018.

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