Analyzing the acoustic urban environment: A geofencing-centered approach in the Curitiba Metropolitan Region, Brazil

Abstract

The industrial development and Brazilian economic context led to important structural changes, among others, the increase of population migration (rural to urban spaces), number of private vehicles (due to tax reduction and state subsidies for new cars and fuel), among others. Such changes impact not only the urban mobility at big cities but also the urban life quality, which is directly affected by pollutant emissions and noise. In order to limit emission impacts on sensitive population (children, elderly people, for example), city managers can enforce bounds on emissions and noise pollution generated by the city traffic in specific regions defined by geographical boundaries. This paper aims to contribute to the challenge of managing urban noise by exploring and analyzing the data with a geofencing approach. In particular, we present a exploratory data analysis toward a case study in Curitiba (1,800,000 inhabitants, a southern Brazilian city) aiming at analyzing possible sources of noise based on a particular data set of noise measurements, geographical information data, traffic, transportation and city licensing data.