General public valorization

The 9th conference on the quality of sound environments, initially scheduled for January 25-26, 2022, has been postponed to September 27-28, 2022.

CENSE at the 9th conference on the quality of sound environments (9èmes assises de la qualité des environnements sonores)

The control of noise in the environment is a major societal, health and economic issue, and brings together many different actors: public actors (local authorities, Ministries in charge of the environment, industry, health ...), private (design offices, manufacturers ...), the world of education and research, citizens' associations. In 2022, the Noise Information Center (CidB, Centre d'information sur le bruit) organizes the 9th National Conference on the Quality of the Noise Environment at Paris Sorbonne University on January 25-26 (major event held every 4-5 years, bringing together all stakeholders to review the situation of noise environments). This new edition is part of the theme "Let's invest [in] the sound environment" and it is quite natural that the CENSE consortium, through the project leader (Université Gustave Eiffel), wished to be a partner of the event, by participating in a workshop during which some results of the CENSE project will be presented.

CENSE : Assessing the urban sound environment of our cities

An alternative approach for the characterization of the quality of urban sound environments

The fight against noise pollution is a societal issue, generally expressed through the production of noise maps. Today, the production of such maps is based on numerical simulations, whose relevance is questionable, due to significant uncertainties, not quantified. On the other hand, a noise observatory allows a realistic description of the noise environment, but at the expense of a weak spatial mesh and a significant cost. Thus, the CENSE project consisted in developing an alternative methodology for characterizing noise environments, more realistic, based on the assimilation of simulated and measured data via a dense network of low cost sensors. CENSE is a resolutely multidisciplinary project, bringing together experts in environmental acoustics, data assimilation, statistics, GIS, sensor network, signal processing and perception... The transfer of the obtained results to operational actors opens serious perspectives for a more realistic and dynamic representation of sound environments for the benefit of citizens.

Characterization of urban sound environments: modelling, noise sensors network and open data

The CENSE project has allowed advances on the methodologies for the production of noise maps by integrating simulation data and measured data on site. In detail, the project has led to many technical developments (contribution to the development of the NoiseModelling simulation software; design of low-cost sensors; deployment of a network for the observation of noise environments; development of embedded algorithms for acoustic analysis; identification of the nature of noise sources; implementation of a cartographic portal for the presentation of noise environments data; implementation of a public web site for the presentation of noise maps), as well as methodological developments (sensitivity analysis of simulation models; processing and enrichment of OSM data for the production of noise maps; development of a meta-model; implementation of data assimilation methodologies; development of models of perception of noise environments).

Major results of the project 

While a "classical" noise map only gives a very approximate view of the noise levels, the project allowed to improve the numerical methods of noise map production and to develop a low cost sensor network, allowing to densify the measurement in urban environment. The implementation of data fusion techniques, simulated and measured, allows to obtain a better representation of the sound environments. Finally, the ability of the sensors to identify the nature of the sound sources involved makes it possible to evaluate the perceived quality of the environments.

Scientific and technical productions

The scientific results have been published in scientific journals and international conferences (11 articles, 20 communications). In parallel, several computational and processing codes, data and methodologies have been released in open access via specialized platforms. The project has also contributed to the development of a standard on the subject of cartographic representation, as well as a prototype of a cartographic portal to display different kinds of data.

NoiseModelling is a library capable of producing noise maps of cities. This tool is almost compliant with the CNOSSOS-EU standard method for the noise emission (only road traffic) and noise propagation. It can be freely used either for research and education, as well as by experts in a professional use., shared with the GPL-3.0 license:

NoiseSensor, for converting audio feed into noise indicators inside sensors, shared using the BSD-3-Clause License,

GeoClimate, a database of building heights: Bernard, Jérémy, Erwan Bocher, Elisabeth Le Saux Wiederhold, François Leconte, Valéry Masson, et Camille Noûs. 2021. « Estimated Height of the OpenStreetMap Buildings of 24 French Communes Using the GeoClimate Software (Version 0.0.1) ». Données diffusées sous licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International