Section: Highlights of the Year

Highlights of the Year

On Wednesday July 8, 2015, Inria announced the launch of SoundCity, a mobile application to measure your personal exposure to noise pollution. The project is developed in the context of CityLab@Inria by the MiMove and CLIME teams, further involving collaboration with French and California startups. The project is supported by the City of Paris smart city initiative and Bernard Jomier, deputy mayor responsible for health, disability, and relations with Paris public hospital system. Noise pollution, which lowers quality of life and harms health, is a serious environmental challenge in almost every major city. The noise levels found in most cities today can interfere with memory and learning, disturb sleep, and contribute to heart disease. In Paris, the urban ecology agency and the Bruitparif association (http://www.bruitparif.fr ) currently rely on monitoring stations and computer simulations to understand noise exposure of citizens. SoundCity aims to complement these data with personal sound level exposure measurements collected with smartphones. SoundCity will also help citizens be more aware and engaged with noise in their environments. More at http://www.inria.fr/en/centre/paris/news/launch-of-soundcity-mobile-application .