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Mapping a city's noise thanks to its residents

Published in July 2024
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EnvironmentResearch in society

With Arnaud Can, acoustics researcher at UMRAE (Université Gustave Eiffel / Cerema) ; Philippe Audubert;  Deputy for Public Policy for the Elderly and Health Prevention at the City of Rezé of Rezé and Emilie Rossa, Environment Director at the City of Rezé.

Getting citizens involved in performing a diagnosis of sound environments across an entire city - that was the objective of the leaders of the SonoRezé project, the result of collaboration between Université Gustave Eiffel and the commune of Rezé.

[Translate to English:] Carte de bruit LA50, indicateur du niveau sonore moyen dans les différentes zones de la ville.

LA50 noise map, indicator of the average sound level in the city’s various zones.

This map of the perceived presence of air traffic noise shows a significant density of sources of noise in the south-west of the city, near the airport zone.

With air, road and rail links, the banks of the Loire and the Sèvre, the urban forest and the Valley of Ilette, the city of Rezé (south of Nantes) offers a diverse acoustic landscape. This was the sound environment analysed by 134 volunteer residents as part of SonoRezé, an experiment launched by the Joint Research Unit in Environmental Acoustics (UMRAE). From December 2021 to June 2022, these citizens were encouraged to use the application NoiseCapture on their smartphone to create a participatory noise map of their city. The only instruction was to take recordings of at least one minute and avoid noises that would cause interference (footsteps, wind, etc.). A total of 1,566 measurements were collected in this way, the equivalent of 93 hours of recording.

 

A unique and successful collective approach

Following the positive outcome of this initial phase, the SonoRezé partners launched a new phase of citizen experimentation supported by theANR’s call for projects, titled “Science with and for society - Participatory research”: SonoRezé II. It began in May 2023 and is scheduled to continue until 2025, providing an opportunity to deepen the diagnostic and evaluation of this city of almost 45,000 residents. Following two workshops held in autumn 2023, citizens, elected officials and researchers working in this area decided to first investigate the question of noise related to air traffic.

Texts written by the Kogito agency after interviewing the co-sponsors.

 

Going further

Title of project:SonoRezé (Citizen diagnostic of Rezé sound environments)
 Funding:I-SITE FUTURE Citizen Researchers call for projects, launched in 2021
Goal:Creating a participatory map of sound levels across the Rezé municipality. Investigating the impact of participant experimentation on the perception of sound environments in order to provide a foundation of citizen experience for city policy.
Project co-leaders:

Arnaud Can, acoustics researcher at UMRAE (Université Gustave Eiffel / Cerema) ; Philippe Audubert; Deputy for Public Policy for the Elderly and Health Prevention at the City of Rezé and Emilie Rossa, Environment Director at the City of Rezé.

Key events:

Participation in the Unesco Week of Sound in January 2022. Scientific results seminar with Rezé residents on 25 June 2022. Participation in FUTURE Days in Nantes and Urban Sound Symposium in Barcelona in April 2023. 2023 Open Science Free Research Software Prize for the NoiseCapture application, “Community” category.

Key words:

Noise maps, participatory measurement, resident knowledge, citizen, research-action

Main deliverable:Final project report (742 Ko)