The Noises of Venice: An Exploration of Noise in a Historic City

The goal of this project was to create a system for citizens to report noise problems in the historically quiet city of Venice, thus enabling government officials to identify key issues and laying the foundations for a new era of digital citizenship. We created a smartphone application that records and uploads noise samples to our website at VeniceNoise.org, which then analyzes and interactively displays each sample. In the process of developing the application and website, we created a new and highly efficient means of data collection that will streamline future field research. After verifying the accuracy of these tools with ARPAV, we investigated a large area of Venice by collecting over 1,000 recordings. These recordings created a greater understanding of the noise situation in Venice