Photo credit: Margerretta from Pexels
by Arline L. Bronzaft, Ph.D., Board of Directors, GrowNYC, and Co-founder, The Quiet Coalition
With about 150 sound monitoring stations around Paris and its suburbs, Bruitparif, the agency that oversees the sound levels recorded by these stations, released two charts this week: one depicting the levels of sound before the coronavirus and one after this pandemic took hold. Bruitparif reported a considerable drop in noise emissions, especially near airports, along highways, and in neighborhoods with night clubs that are now shut down.
Yes indeed, the coronavirus pandemic has kept people indoors. Fewer are flying, traveling the roads, or using the rails. While at home, residents are not hearing construction sounds because of construction has been suspended. Paris and its nearby suburbs are much quieter as the graph in the article indicates. I prefer the word quiet to silent.
In 2016, New York University researchers launched a Sounds of New York City (SONYC) program that involves placing sensors in New York City that would provide data on the sound levels at the sites where these sensors would be placed. The data collected by SONYC were to be shared with the City’s Department of Environmental Protection to assist them in more effectively lessening the noise levels in the city.
One could now ask the New York University professors to compare the data collected before the virus took hold in the city with sound level data collected several weeks later. Although such an initiative was not envisioned by the NYU program when it was developed, its data collection could offer a “before” and “after” pandemic view of New York City sound levels.
Other cities, e.g. Berlin, have also gathered data on urban sound levels and have created noise maps from these data. It would be worthwhile to ask other cities whether they, like Paris, have created before and after the coronavirus pandemic noise maps. With noise pollution a major problem, primarily in urban areas, and a health hazard, such data might be useful in designing ways to lessen the adverse impacts from noise.
