Monitoring Exposure to Traffic Noise with Mobile Phones in China: A Review of Context

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International Journal of Information and Computer Science (IJICS) Volume 3, 2014 doi: 10.14355/ijics.2014.03.008

Monitoring Exposure to Traffic Noise with Mobile Phones in China: A Review of Context S. Leao1, W. Zhou2 School of Architecture and Built Environment, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

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Research Center for Eco-Environmental Studies, Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China simone.leao@deakin.edu.au; 2weiqi.zhou@gmail.com

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Abstract There is sufficient scientific evidence that noise exposure can cause serious health problems, including hypertension and heart disease. 2Loud? is a mobile phone application developed and tested as a technology to accurately monitor, assess and map the level of exposure to traffic noise of citizens. This paper aims to set the basis for the test of 2Loud? in China, through a context review, as part of a collaborative research between Deakin University and the Chinese Academy of Science (RCEES). Australia and China share similarities and have differences in relation to patterns of urbanisation and technologies’ use, and cultural and political backgrounds. These can provide a fertile environment for the investigation of opportunities and barriers to develop environmental community sensing processes related to noise in urban areas, which can make an impact on the quality of life of the population.

Keywords Mobile Phone Sensing; Traffic Noise; Context Review; Australia; China

Introduction There is sufficient scientific evidence that noise exposure can induce hearing impairment, annoyance, sleep disturbance, decreased school performance, and cause hypertension and ischemic heart disease (Miedema et al, 2011).

Signs and symptoms of ill-health may develop following endocrine and autoimmune responses to stress when people are exposed to road traffic noise in the immediate to long-term, particularly during the sleep period. The acuity and severity of ill-health depends on the intensity, frequency and duration of noise that people are exposed to (Goines and Hagler, 2007). Therefore, measuring and monitoring exposure to traffic noise is essential to the promotion of healthy urban environments.

Taking into consideration in numerous potential health problems associated with exposure to excessive

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traffic noise, it is surprising the little information available on noise worldwide, particularly for the night time. The 2009 ‘Night Noise Guidelines for Europe’ by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2009) suggests an equation to estimate indoor exposure to noise based on outdoors measurements and some typical parameters of noise attenuation related to wall and window insulation. However, the limited amount of technical outdoor noise measurements (costly and time consuming to produce and update), and the diversity of dwelling structures in different countries and regions makes this equation an imprecise estimator.

It is equally surprising to notice the significant gap between the accumulated knowledge on noise & health, and the actual application of such knowledge into policies and regulations for noise management in urban areas. In general, they are arbitrary and incomplete, allowing people to be exposed to unhealthy levels of noise (EEA, 2009). Drawing on the evidence base over the last 50 years, WHO (2010) recommends that no one should be exposed to outdoor noise levels above 55 dBA during the day, and 50 dBA during the night, and 40 dBA indoors during the night.

There has been some work in the last five years investigating the use of mobile phones as devices for environmental noise monitoring. They include (Maisonneuv et al, 2009), NoiseSpy (Kanjo, 2010), EarPhone Rana et al, 2010), NoiseMeter1 (Li et al, 2013) and 2Loud? (Leao et al, 2014). The latter was developed by one of the authors of this paper. All these initiatives tried to benefit from the increasing set of powerful embedded sensors and the ubiquity of mobile phones (Gouveia and Fonseca, 2008; Lane et al, 2010). These benefits, however, also come accompanied by challenges. Conrad and Hilchey (2011) identified a number of issues that can hinder the

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success of community based monitoring groups in achieving their goals, such as data fragmentation, inaccuracy, lack of participant objectivity, and lack of volunteer interest or networking opportunities.

The 2Loud?mobile phone application was developed and tested as a means to monitor, assess and map the level of exposure to traffic noise of citizens with focus on the night period and indoor locations, since sleep disturbance is one of the major triggers for ill health related to traffic noise. Based on a community participation experiment using the 2Loud? application ina small region close to freeways in Melbourne/Australia, the results indicated good level of accuracy for the noise measurements by mobile phones and also demonstrated significant indoornight exposure to traffic noise in the study area above recommended levels.

This paper aims to set the basis for the test of 2Loud? in China, as part of a collaborative research between Deakin University, Australia, and the Chinese Academy of Science (Research Centre for EcoEnvironmental Science, RCEES). Australia and China share similarities and differences that can provide a fertile environment for the investigation of opportunities and barriers in the development of environmental community sensing processes related to noise in urban areas. In terms of similarities, both countries have increasing levels of traffic noise due to urbanisation processes, and noise policies and regulations that do not satisfy current world best practices and recommendations. This results in high levels of exposure to traffic noise of their populations.

Another similarity is the wide dissemination and acceptance of mobile phones in the community and the technological progress towards improved communication networks. Among the differences we can mention the pattern of urbanisation (low density in Australia and high density in China), as well as the scale and pace of the urbanization process, which is larger and faster in China. The share market between mobile technologies is also different (predominantly Android in China, and an equal share between Android and iOs in Australia). Cultural and political contexts can also be taken into account as differing factors.

Based on a review of the literature focused on the context of China, this paper is divided into five sections. First it described the situation of exposure to traffic noise in Chinese cities. Second, it assessed how personal mobile phones are being disseminated and

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accepted in China. Third, it describes how environmental planning has been changing in China in the last 30 years, discussing the changes in the Chinese governance and the role of participatory planning. The factors covered in these sections (traffic noise; mobile phone technology; and environmental governance and participation) provide a rich picture of the current context for participatory noise sensing in China. Section four summarises these contextual elements, through the lenses of the 2Loud? initiative, identifying potential opportunities and barriers that must be taken into consideration. Finally, the conclusion section presents the recommended following steps for this research.

Traffic Noise in Chinese Cities This section provides a review of scientific studies on traffic noise in China reported in the literature. The published research is not extensive in this field in China, but the references presented here, with studies ranging from 1995 to 2012, and covering different parts of the country (Figure 1), provide a good background for the existing and increasing problem of exposure to traffic noise in Chinese cities. It also provides an insight on the type of approaches that academic research has taken into this field. We present the references in chronological order.

FIGURE 1. CITIES IN CHINA WITH TRAFFIC NOISE STUDIES REVIEWED

Back in 1995, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in China released a report covering different environmental themes relevant for the 21st century, in which noise was included. Environmental noise was considered a serious national issue, especially noise associated with traffic. According to this report, 71% of the curbside noise level in Chinese cities with population more than 1 million was above 70 dBA,

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which has been the national standard since 1993 (EPAChina, 1993). This caused 2/3 of the urban residents in those cities to be exposed to noise levels higher than the standard. At this time, costs related to prevention and remediation targeted at bringing the level of noise pollution within accepted standards were estimated at US $2.5 billion per year in China.

Wong at al. (2002) used 2,000 surveys in Hong Kong in 1998 in a study aimed at analysing the attitude of the community towards environmental noise. The results indicated that noise pollution was ranked third among five selected social concerns: air pollution, security, noise pollution, traffic jam, cleanliness, in that order.

Most of the respondents (60%) found Hong Kong noisy, and the most annoying source of noise was traffic. Nonetheless, the large majority of the respondents (80%) stated that they did nothing against the noise, such as complaining to authorities, or adopting a closed-window life style. 56% of the respondents could not name any legislation on noise control, indicating the need for more communication and education to the public.

In 2001 Li et al. evaluated traffic noise in main roads in Beijing, including the 2nd and 3rd Ring Roads around central downtown, and Chang-An Avenue, a major East-West corridor through the heart of the city. A large number of selected locations on these main roads were monitored over a long period during the day, following the National Standard of China GB3222-82 (measurement of urban environmental noise). The analysis used three indicators: Leq (noise level), TNI (traffic noise index) and NPL (noise pollution level).

The results of Li’s study indicated the presence of high levels of noise in the studied areas due to extensive traffic flow during the day. Traffic was saturated, with flows higher than the designed capacity. In the 2nd and 3rd ring roads, for example, there were more than 3,000 vehicles/hour on average, and on half of the road’s segments, the flow rate reached 9,000 vehicles/hour.

The hourly equivalent noise level (Leq) exceeded the national standard of 70 dBA during day time in almost all the sites monitored (average 75.2 dBA and maximum of 79.4 dBA). The averaged noise pollution level NPL of 82 fell into the “unacceptable” category (Li et al, 2002).

The same authors progressed on this research, repeating the methodology, one year after the previous assessment (Li and Tao, 2004). In 2002, they monitored the same sites of the previous study, adding more monitoring sites in the newly completed

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4th Ring Road. The results indicated that the main roads remained overloaded by traffic flow during the day, presenting traffic noise exceeding regulations and standards by 5 dBA in average (approximately 75 dBA). The 4th Ring Road balanced traffic flow in Beijing, and with new traffic management measures (increased speed and restriction for heavy vehicles), there has been some good outcomes. Traffic noise environment was slightly improved inside the third Ring Road by -0.7 dBA, on average. It is important to note that a sound pressure level increase smaller than 3 dBA is not perceived as a difference in sound by the human ear (Moser, 2013). In contrast, the traffic environment deteriorated beyond the 3rd Ring Road at the same time. This may have been because the new Ring Road mitigated heavy traffic flow in the central part of Beijing, but spread high traffic outwards. By the end of this study, the 5th Ring Road was under construction.

Few years later, Ma et al. (2006) assessed traffic noise pollution in Lanzhou city, considering the variation from 1989 to 2003. The methodology used an extensive time series dataset with continuous noise measurements available for 52 main roads in the city.

Using factor analysis, they assessed the impact of traffic volume, composition, road condition, and traffic management on noise pollution, finding significant influence of the mentioned factors on the level of noise.

The resultsindicated that the mean Leq in Lanzhou for the period was 69 dBA, just at the limit of the national standard. However, since the permissible criteria of 70 dBA was exceeded in more than a third of the 15 year period analysed, Ma et al. [20] classified noise pollution as a serious issue in Lanzhou city.

Differently fromLi et al. [17, 18] and Ma et al. [20], which were researchers in the built environment field, Li et al. (2008) were related to the field of clinical epidemiology and occupational medicine. They were interested in investigating not only traffic noise, but the level of annoyance associated with it, and the consequent quality of life of residents. They used a college dormitory building near the 4th Ring Road in Beijing as the case study. The methodology combined outdoor (according to the national standard) and indoor noise measurement over 24 hour periods. The authors mentioned that there are only few methods recommended for indoor noise and noise in high-rise residences, and that more research on that area is required. The study involved a total of 24 rooms over 12 floors, being half of the rooms on a noisy side (facing the Ring Road), and half on a quiet side (facing

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the court yard), and approximately 1,300 resident students were interviewed.

The results indicated an average outdoor day-to-night noise level of 79.2 dBA in noisy rooms and 64 dBA in quieter rooms, a significant difference of 15 dBA. However, there was no significant difference in the average indoor day-to-night noise. Noise at night was 2 to 6 dBA lower than the day noise for the same locations. The equivalent noise levels from 2 to 5 am, when all residents were sleeping presented significant difference between noisy and quiet rooms (around 5 dBA higher in noisy rooms than in the quieter rooms).

At this interval the main source of noise would potentially be traffic; before this period people’s conversation and other activities influenced indoor noise. When interviewed, nearly 39 to 50% of the respondents living in the noisy rooms indicated to be highly annoyed by traffic noise in two different scales, respectively. This is the only study we found reported in the literature related to indoor exposure to traffic noise in China; investigating the night period, and also evaluating the relationship with annoyance. The effect of the floors in the high-rise building in relation to exposure to traffic noise was not analysed.

More recently, Sheng and Tang (2011) developed a study interested in pedestrian exposure to traffic noise, with focus on the influence of urban form on noise pollution. They have used Macao peninsula as a case study. This area was selected by the fact that it has high population and motor vehicle density. The study used real traffic and noise data collected on the Peninsula, divided into four regions. Each region represented a phase in the historic development of Macao, from 1,557 to the present, having unique urban forms with different urban geometries and land use properties. The results of this study indicated that Macao has a serious traffic noise pollution situation.

About 60% of traffic noise levels along the major pedestrian sidewalks in the evening peak-hour exceed the national standard of 70 dBA in China. In the conclusions the authors suggested that this context of noise pollution can affect the health of the pedestrians, and also can impact tourism by reducing the comfort of tourists walking in the historic center. These implications, however, have not been pursued by further research.

Around the same period, Wang and Kang (2011) were also interested in the role of urban morphology on the traffic noise distribution. They argue that finding correlation patterns between noise distribution and

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urban morphology can be helpful in reducing the noise impact through urban design strategies. These include better planning and design for the roads network and patterns of building block arrangements.

Wang and Kang (2011) compared different patterns of a typical high density Eastern City and a typical low density Western City, using Wuhan/China and Manchester/UK as case studies. These two cities were chosen because they have similar scales for population and traffic volume; however they have considerable differences in building form and traffic pattern. The methodology applied combined data on urban landuse, building and road density, on-site traffic flow measurements, and noise measurements produced by a noise mapping software. The comparison results showed that the average and minimum noise levels in Greater Manchester are generally higher than that in Wuhan samples by 6 dBA, while the maximum noise level in Wuhan samples is mostly higher by 3dBA. The high density of tall buildings and the strong hierarchy of roads in the Chinese city influence these results.

In 2013 Wang et al. indicated that the already existing large availability of data on traffic noise in China may increase even more in the future. As part of the ‘Environmental Internet of Things (EIoT) in China’, Wang et al (2013) described and assessed a new traffic noise monitoring methodology, called ‘Noise Meter 1’, based on the current wireless technological developments, and applied it to Xiamen City. The research posed emphasis on the computational side of the noise monitoring system, as part of a wider environmental monitoring initiative in China, presenting some results of the level of noise in the study area, but not discussing the implications of such a context for the residents.

Also as part of EIoT, Li et al (2013) developed and assessed a noise monitoring systems through mobile phones which allowed citizen’s participation. In a test in China between 2011 and 2012, the system had attracted more than 30,000 downloads of the application nationwide, and almost 2,000 people provided data for the monitoring system. The participatory system demonstrated advantages to conventional monitoring in terms of costs for data collection, and sensor maintenance. Data credibility was seen as the main disadvantage, especially considering that more than 300 different types of devices based on Android were used, for which a minority had been calibrated. Impact of the system on public awareness was not assessed.

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This brief overview demonstrates that traffic noise is generally high in large Chinese cities. The national standard for environmental noise in China, which is high above the recommendations of the World Health Organization (2009, 2010), seems not to be questioned by any of the reviewed scientific studies. Indeed, most of the studies were focused on the description of the noise monitoring system, or resulting noise context, rather than on the assessment of its implications for the quality of life and health of the population. Apart from few studies involving interviews or questionnaires to people exposed to certain levels of noise, and the participatory sensing experiment in Xiamen, the review suggests that the monitoring process is inthe hands of scientists and technicians.

Personal Mobile Phone Technology in China In 2002 the total number of mobile phones in use worldwide exceeded the number of landlines (Donner, 2008). China is currently the world’s largest market for cell phones; according to Bell (2006), there are more than 340 million cell phones subscribers in the country, which is around one third of the world’s total number of phone users.

The dissemination of mobile phones across the globe has been closely accompanied by scientific research on the determinants of mobile adoption, impacts of mobile use, and interrelationships between mobile technologies and users. Donner, for example, reviewed in 2008 more than 200 recent studies on mobile phone adoption in developing countries, including China, and analysed the interactions between technology and cultural and social contexts, economic constraints and environmental factors. He concluded that it is possible to attribute some universal properties to mobile use in the globalized world, but this should not exclude regional and contextual variations.

The research carried out by Bell in 2006 follows this stream of thought. Taking Asia as the case study area, she critically interrogates the ways in which cultural practices are shaping people’s relationship with new information and communication technologies in urbanareas. Bell argues that pre-existing patterns of social mobility play a significant role in the acceptance andforms of use of mobile devices. Through an extensive qualitative research, she concludes that mobile phones, although its idealized universal dimension, have allowed space for re-inscription of local particularities and cultural differences.

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Modes of ownership and disposal of mobile phones in Asia clearly contrast with western typical modes.

Although the dominant model of mobile phone ownership is generally at an individual level, it was also the case amongst many of the households in Asia that people shared mobile phones. This reduces privacy and demonstrates cultural patterns around sharing and notions of social solidarity beyond the individual (Bell, 2004). Modes of old mobile phones’ disposal have also an interesting cultural perspective.

While the typical western practice is to constantly upgrade technology, transferring obsolete items to waste, old technology seems to have a longer life in Asian countries. The circulation and recirculation of technology reflects social, kin, political and geographic relationships, such as older phones moving from husbands to wives, parents to younger children, or from urban to rural relatives (Bell, 2006).

Social inscriptions in the use of technologies such as mobile phones, can be influenced by diverse cultural and political contexts. In China, for example, the fact that in Chinese language individual or sequence of numbers are read as symbols with varying degrees of auspiciousness or inauspiciousness, a phone number can be embedded with symbolic meanings not seen anywhere else (Bell, 2006). In terms of the political context, the Chinese government exerts some level of control over information and digital media, including filtering internet access and monitoring all SMS traffic (Zittrain and Edelman, 2003). This restricted autonomy and level of surveillance are most likely to affect in some way how people use their devices for all types of communication.

Although mobile commerce is out of the scope of this paper, it is a field of research which brings interesting factors about the increasing adoption of mobile phones for other uses than verbal or textual communication. A better understanding of these factors may be relevant for the intended use of mobile phones as environmental monitoring devices and community engagement, which is the focus of the 2Loud? research.

Although China ranks first in terms of the number of mobile phone users, the number of mobile-commerce consumers is still relatively small compared with other countries and regions in Asia, such as Japan and Korea.

Based on a “theory of reasoned action” methodology, Min et al (2008) investigated the behaviour intention/use of internet services through mobile phones as influenced by factors such as the perceived usefulness, the perceived ease of use, the social

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influence, and the facilitating conditions. They also included “Chinese culture” as an additional influence, intermediating the way the factors previously mentioned are perceived.

Lee et al (2007) were also interested in the effects of cultural characteristics on mobile internet use. They argue that despite most of the existing research on the topic has equated country with culture, this assumption can be misleading since cultural differences exist both within and across political boundaries. Therefore, their focus was to examine how the cultural characteristics of individual users affect their beliefs, and their ensuing behaviour related to the adoption of a specific IT. By applying a survey with almost 5,000 people in Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Lee et al (2007) identified four dimensions that ‘together constitute the cultural lenses through which a user sees the world’.

First, ‘uncertainty avoidance’ is related to the extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by uncertainty or unknown situations, and it is negatively correlated to adoption of technologies. Second, ‘individualism-collectivism’ refers to the preference for loosely knit social framework, in which people are expected to take care of themselves (individualism), in contrast with the preference for a tightly knit social framework where personal goals are subordinated to those of the group. Individualism was found to increase adoption of mobile technology. Third, ‘context’ refers to the amount of information in a given communication as a function of the context in which it occurs. People with high-context cultures tend to prefer face-to-face meetings or iconic and visual communication because it is easier to identify the contextual aspects than with written communication.

High-context increases adoption. Finally, ‘time perception’ is related to the culture of single or multitask development. Single task tendencies increase mobile technology adoption, because proceeding in a sequential and linear way, in contrast with simultaneous and concurrent processing, fits better for mobile phone uses. By analysing the uses of internet services through mobile phones in China, they proposed a culture-technology fit model, which combined components of conventional technology acceptance models, similar to the one described by Min et al (2008), with cultural dimensions (Figure 2).

This framework can be useful for the assessment of the adoption of 2Loud? in China in the future. It combines cultural aspects at the individual level, with contextual

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(cultural and political) and technological aspects at the collective society level.

FIGURE 2. CULTURE-TECHNOLOGY FIT MODEL FOR ADOPTION OF ICT

Environmental Planning and Participatory Governance in China China presents a steady economic growth since the 1970s, with an annual average increase of around 9% in the GDP (Wang, 2010). The social advances in living standards from the economic development were in some extent produced at the expense of natural resource depletion and pollution generation.

However, it is also important to recognize the evolution of the environmental planning system in China that has been changing, adapting and evolving in order to try to reconciliate economic development and environmental conservation. Zhang and Wen (2008) identify five distinct phases of the environmental planning framework in China. The first phase was characterized by a progression from the adoption of environmental protection as a basic state policy to the adoption of a sustainable development strategy. The second phase refers to moving from pollution control only, to ecological conservation equally. Third, the system shifted from end-of-pipe treatment to source control. Fourth, it moved from point source treatment to regional environmental governance. And finally, it turned away from an administrative management-based method and towards a legal and economic instruments-based approach.

As a result, environmental policies in China have been evolving and improving in terms of its aims, scope, methods and instruments.

Some important achievements can be listed (Zhang and Wen, 2008; Mol, 2009): (1) the annual investment in pollution control has increased from 10 billion Yuan in 1991 to 340 billion Yuan in 2007; it represents an increase of the proportion of investment in GDP from 0.6% to 1.4%; (2)

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The proportion of nature reserves in the country’s total territory increased from around 2% in 1985 to 16% in 2005; (3) during 1996-2000, China forced more than 80,000 small enterprises in 15 heavy polluting industries to shut down or stop production lines; and another 238,000 polluting enterprises across the country continued to operate after reaching required emission standards.

The progress of the environmental planning system in China has been complemented in recent years by the establishment of extensive and sophisticated networked systems for collection of environmental data and monitoring of environmental processes.

Many of these systems are part of key laboratories associated to Chinese research centres, and benefit from the most advanced computer and communication technological developments. The International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology has published a special edition in 2013 on the ‘Environmental Internet of Things (EIoT) in China”. A number of papers described the configuration, function and performance of monitoring systems for water, soil, air, wind, noise, among other environmental factors in urban areas of China (Wang et al, 2013; Zheng et al, 2013; Su et al, 2013; Zhao et al, 2013).

This does not mean that China stops facing serious challenges of pollution control and ecological deterioration. Indeed, according to Zhang and Wen (2008) the Chinese government goal of realising a completely well-off society by the year 2020 would require a four-fold increase over China’s year 2000 GDP. This will bring great challenges to the dual tasks of developing the national economy and protecting its ecological environment. This is particularly relevant in urban centres. China has some of the largest cities in the world, and the rate of urbanization remains high.

Since the economic reforms of 1978 there has been an intensified rural-urban migration and a more heterogeneous urban population. This has been accompanied by significant changes in the spatial structure of cities, including geographical reorganization through urban land-use change, new housing development, globalization, suburbanization, polycentric restructuring of urban form, and changes in the spatial/administrative systems of cities (Ma, 2002). The effect of some of these processes on the exposure of the urban population to traffic noise was discussed in previous section of this paper.

“International cooperation and public participation”

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were identified by Zhang and Wen in 2008 as key factors driving further progress on environmental planning in China. In relation to public participation, however, they mention that environmentally oriented non-government organisations (NGOs) are still limited in scale in China because the legal framework of the country does not promote the creation of NGOs. Furthermore, the existing environmental NGOs are engaged in a constant struggle for survival, characterized by legal and political constraints, lack of environmental expertise and management skills, and scarcity of financial resources. This is aligned with Mol (2009), who described that although there are now over 10,000 local, provincial and national environmental NGOs in China, most of them are still related to the State (Government-Oriented NonGovernmental Organisatons or CONGOs), and only a minority, with weak impact, are independent (grassroots NGOs).

China is restructuring its decision-making system, moving away from centralization as a top-down process towards localization as a bottom-up response to maximize local interests in the decision-making structure. In the field of urban development, it is now the municipalities rather than the central government that are shaping China’s urban landscape (Zhang, 2002). This is because both land use decisions and development funds are now at the hands of local authorities. This indeed extends beyond the municipality (lower levels of administration) in some regions, including urban district within a municipality, and street offices within an urban district. Moreover, the need to raise development funds included more stakeholders in the decision-making process, such as developers, both domestic and foreign. Zhang (2002) considers, however, that this process of decentralization created considerable space for the appearance of more players on the urban development stage, but not much for ordinary citizen participation.

He calls it a quasi-participatory process.

Despite that context, Mol(2009) was positive when assessing the changes in urban environmental governance in China, in comparison to practices of the past. With a focus on cities, he identified a number of new practices that can have a significant impact on the quality of the environment in Chinese cities. First, the content of environmental policy-making in China has been rapidly modernized and updated, catching up with scientific and technological developments worldwide. Second, decentralisation and more flexibility in environmental policy-making and

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implementation are paralleled, demonstrating a shift in governance. In this context, local governments and bureaus are given and taking larger degrees of freedom in developing environmental priorities, and strategies. This is part of a wider tendency of less centralized control. Third, there has been a strengthening of the rule of environmental law, through the implementation of a legal framework for urban-environmental management. And finally, China has recently seen an increase in the involvement of citizens in environmental policy-making and implementation. The 2003 Environmental Impact Assessment Law, and especially its 2006 public participation provisions, includes stipulations on openness of information, safeguarding participants’ rights, and procedures and methods for public involvement, including opinion surveys, consultations, seminars, debates and public hearings.

This latter dimension is significant to the scope of our 2Loud? project, which is based on the concept of citizens monitoring the quality of their own environment, as part of a participatory urban planning and management process. Some authors reported real initiatives developed in China involving public participation in urban and environmental processes.

Zhong and Mol (2008), for example, analysed the performance of emergent public hearings in China, using the urban water tariff setting process as case study, identifying it as the seed of a turning point towards a more transparent, decentralized and participative governance.

The Context for Community Noise Monitoring with Mobile Phones in China From the review of the literature developed in this paper, we could identify a number of aspects of the current context of China which are relevant to the development of a participatory noise sensing project.

Some of them characterise opportunities. Table 1 summarises these factors, also indicating which ones are also shared in the context of 2Loud? in Australia.

These opportunity factors can stimulate or facilitate the implementation of the proposed initiative.

On the other hand, some of the factors identified in this review characterise potential barriers to the implementation of the initiative. Table 2 summarises these factors, also indicating which ones are also present in Australia. These barrier factors need to be taken into consideration when the project goals are established, or they should be explicitly addressed if

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they are expected to be overcome as part of the implementation of the proposed initiative.

TABLE 1. FACTORS AFFECTING OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARTICIPATORY NOISE SENSING WITH MOBILE PHONES IN CHINA; COMPARISON TO AUSTRALIA

OPPORTUNITIES Traffic noise is an urban issue Mobile phones are widely disseminated Environmental regulations are being modernized and upgraded quickly Environmental monitoring networks for urban noise exist Public participation as a governance practice is emerging Technological development on communication networks is appropriate

Austr alia 







China

 











Collectivism culture

  

Risk-taker culture High context culture (iconic language) Experience with noise monitoring with mobile phones





TABLE 2. FACTORS AFFECTING BARRIERS FOR PARTICIPATORY NOISE SENSING WITH MOBILE PHONES IN CHINA, IN COMPARISON TO AUSTRALIA

BARRIERS Noise regulation is out-of-date Pace and scale of urbanization is fast and large Internet services in mobile phones are not at full potential Android has 80% of market share in China (2Loud? is iOS based) Scale of required participation to produce societal impact is large Privacy and trust issues related to providing and sharing data Cost of connection and data transfer

Australia 

China    



 





In the tables presented above, China has more potential opportunities than Australia for the proposed project, but at the same time, it also has more barriers to a successful development. This framework can assist in the preliminary process of planning the project’s goals and structure, as well as its assessment criteria.

Following the framework, we briefly analyse here some lessons learned from the Australian-2Loud? initiative and the Chinese-Noise Meter 1 initiative.

In 2011-2012 a mobile application for measuring noise with mobile phones, called ‘Noise Meter 1’, was developed and tested as part of a project on public participation in environmental monitoring in China (Wang et al, 2013). The project was ambitious and successful in some achievements, such as the scale of

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the enterprise (nationwide scale), and the demonstration of the stability of the monitoring system for a large sample of records (over 500,000 records from almost 2,000 participants within a year period). Positive results also indicated the low cost and low maintenance required for the monitoring network.

However, the project also presented some limitations.

First, the level of participation was below expectations.

Results indicated a significant interest from the community, with a large amount of downloads of the application in mobile phones (more than 30,000 downloads). Unfortunately, only a small proportion (around 6%) were willing to provide and share their data. The low engagement could have been caused by privacy concerns, lack of trust, inability to use the system, or limitations in data transfer allowance.

Second, and most important limitation of this study, was the low quality of the data produced; or, in more appropriate words, the lack of method to assess the accuracy and quality of the data. Noise Meter 1 was developed for Android operational system and calibrated in a laboratory for two mobile phone devices. This aligns with the fact that around 80% of the Chinese smartphone market belongs to Android.

However, the almost 2,000 participants collecting and providing noise readings used approximately 300 different types of devices. The application had not been calibrated for the majority of those devices, and by having different audio systems, the noise readings reported may be significantly different than the real noise experienced in the place of the monitoring.

The 2Loud? application has been tested in a real community experiment in Australia in 2013, and results indicated positive and negative outcomes. On the positive side we can mention the high accuracy of the data collected, and the high performance and stability of the system. On the negative side, the low participation and the restriction of only using Apple devices can be listed.

The scale of the 2Loud? study was considerably smaller than the Chinese case study reported previously. Residents of approximately 800 dwellings living in close proximity to two busy freeways in Metropolitan Melbourne were invited to participate in the project. Slightly more than 4% of the dwellings invited had actually engaged in the project, sharing regularly their noise readings. They provided around 1,500 hours of noise readings within a 6 week period of monitoring.

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To the best of our knowledge, 2Loud?presents the highest accuracy for noise measurements with mobile phones reported in the literature (+ 1.6 dBA). This high accuracy was a result of three combined factors: the focus on indoor environment; the use of a limited amount of different devices; and an extensive process of laboratory calibration and fieldwork validation of the data. By limiting the assessment to indoor noise, the readings are less vulnerable to external factors such as wind and rain affecting the recording.

Moreover, 2Loud? was developed to run in iOS operational system, compatible with Apple devices with very similar hardware (iPhone and iPad). An extensive calibration process for the suitable devices was performed before the release of the application. In this context, the high quality of data was obtained at the expense of limiting the use of 2Loud? to those who had a suitable device. Since the use of smartphones running Android operating system (44%) has just overtaken iOS (43%) for the first time in Australia (eGov, 2013), this limitation may be of concern in the future if the tendency is confirmed and progresses.

The 2Loud? project also included an extensive fieldwork validation process, in which a mobile phone with the 2Loud? application measured noise indoors simultaneously to a scientific sound meter at the same location for a period of 24 hours. Twenty dwellings in the study area were used as reference sites. This allowed the assessment of the performance of the application indifferent residential contexts. The low participation mentioned in the Chinese experience, has also occurred in the 2Loud? test. A survey is currently collecting data with the objective to analyse the reasons for the low participation, and the quality of the participants’ experience, as a way to identify forms to produce a more inclusive and engaging participatory process for the community in the future.

Based on these two initiatives we argue here that technology is not a limitation any more for producing accurate and reliable noise environmental monitoring systems, but that the process of community engagement needs to be based on a planned strategy, rather than left to simple volunteerism. Also, a simultaneous investment in quantity and quality of data needs to be obtained if the community noise monitoring is expected to portray urban contexts and make an impact on the planning and management processes of traffic noise in urban areas.

Conclusions Currently, the majority of the authors involved in the

International Journal of Information and Computer Science (IJICS) Volume 3, 2014

development of the mobile phone noise applications NoiseTube, NoiseSpy and Ear-Phone moved on to new topics of research. This is unfortunate, because this field needs further development before it can produce a significant impact on the foundations, methods and procedures for urban noise management.

One of the main causes of the abandonment of participatory-mobile noise mapping research mentioned above may be because those researches were led by the information technology field and had technological development as the driving force. Most of those researchers remain working on the fields of pervasive computing and wireless sensing, but they are now developing different systems or approaching different themes related to mobile sensing.

The 2Loud? project differs from its predecessors by having the urban environment as the driving force. Its core is not only the development of the mobile application itself, but its use by communities and the impacts of this usage on the planning and management of urban spaces with the goal of achieving healthier cities.

Based on the context of China reviewed in this paper and the recent lessons learned from the test of 2Loud? in Australia, we believe that a path was set for a successful transposition of the experience. This is strengthened by the fact that a similar experiment has been recently developed by a Chinese research team, and lessons were also learned from it. This previous learning process and the combination of similarities and differences between the two countries can provide the scope for the start of a trans-national research interrelating urbanisation, traffic noise, mobile technology, environmental monitoring, community participation, and public health.

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Dr Simone Leao is a Lecturer in Urban Technologies in the School of Architecture and Built Environment of Deakin University, Australia. She has a combined background in environmental engineering, urban planning and geomatics.

Throughout her career these fields have been interwoven having the city as the linking element. Dr Leao’s main research interest is in better understanding the interdependencies between built and natural environments.

With this goal she works on developing knowledge and methodologies to assist in the generation of new or regeneration of existing areas with awareness and consideration of the challenges faced by urban and environmental planning, such as sustainable development and urban health goals, climate change processes, and high urbanization rates.

Dr W. Zhou is a research Professor at the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) at the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) in Beijing, China. He combines background in environmental sciences, cartography and natural resources, having a PhD from the University of Vermont, and a postdoc from the University of California, Davis. Dr Zhou integrates field observations, remote sensing, GIS and modelling to understand the structure of urban socio-ecological systems, and its links to ecological functions.

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