A community-driven plug-and-sense sensor network for soundscapes and environmental noise

While the issue of environmental noise pollution assessment is complex and manifold, one particular dimension that makes current noise assessment difficult is sensor network scaling. In this paper, we provide updates and a report on the Citygram community-driven plug- and-sense sensor network system that enables sensor network scaling while addressing measurement data integrity and cost. Under the umbrella of the Citygram project, we approach the design of a community-driven sensor network guided by three adages including (1) you can't fix what you can't measure, (2) more [data] is better, and (3) seeing is believing. Adage (1) guides sensor network designs to enable soundscape data acquisition built on community-driven technological solutions, adage (2) embraces modern edge computing paradigms to enable big data analytics, and adage (3) embraces data visualization to facilitate understanding and observation of soundscapes.