Knowing how, when and why to deal with noise pollution is an intricate challenge, with often-overlooked considerations. Should noise be prioritised over other pollutants, such as air pollution? Is the problem recurring? Is it related to infrastructure from roads or planes? Is noise pollution a symptom of the environment or a trigger for causing it? Are we accurately measuring the mental and physical effects on people? When does noise move from being a nuisance to a serious public health concern? 

What is evident is that the requirements for effective noise management and the questions being asked about noise are changing, and with it, new opportunities present themselves. First, noise pollution is no longer an isolated concern; instead, it touches all areas of society, from neighbourhoods, to health and wellness, to ecology, and to urban planning and infrastructure.  Second, managing it requires high-quality data collection, monitoring and expert analysis, and the solutions involved as a result are often not as simple as ‘filtering’ it out, as can be the case with the air.

The Noise App team has been dedicated to solving and standardising the areas of data collection and management for many years now, and has produced the UK’s number one neighbourhood noise and community safety reporting app. The app has been instrumental in standardising data formats and turning the onerous pen-and-paper noise diary into a fully digitised workflow from reporter to investigator, drastically reducing triage and resolution times. Such workflows have enabled the app to grow significantly, processing over a million noise reports annually and serving 300,000 people through the platform.

However, where we go from here requires more intelligence – more intelligence at scale. As demands on the types and frequency of noise investigations increase, we must look to automation to assist with our work. With the inclusion of AI and machine learning, we can look to answer questions which otherwise might have taken hours to investigate . . . Is this neighbourhood experiencing more noise complaints because of increased traffic, or is there a deeper issue at play? Can we discover patterns across multiple complainants and highlight risks more quickly? Can we pick out and label events in audio so we know when a nuisance becomes a serious health hazard or police matter? Can we summarise subjective reporting and pattern-match audio events across multiple regions to depict widespread issues without continuous on-site monitoring? It seems that a more sustainable future in noise investigations is possible.

The expertise we have developed building The Noise App means we are now best placed to create tools to help answer these questions. This forecasting, trend analysis, audio classification and intelligent summarisation can give the investigator a chance to resolve the problem before it escalates. 

There is no doubt that the demands on noise investigators are changing; there is also no doubt that the role of the noise investigator is becoming more important to society. The key is to understand how to hone our expertise with the inclusion of technology, allowing us to work towards a truer picture of noise and a healthier community in which to live. 

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