Detection of Anomalous Noise Events for Real-Time Road-Traffic Noise Mapping: The Dynamap’s project case study

Abstract Environmental noise is increasing year after year, especially in urban and suburban areas. Besides annoyance, environmental noise also causes harmful health effects on people. The Environmental Noise Directive 2002/49/EC (END) is the main instrument of the European Union to identify and combat noise pollution, followed by the CNOSSOS-EU methodological framework. In compliance with the END legislation, the European Member States are required to publish noise maps and action plans every five years. The emergence of Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks (WASNs) have changed the paradigm to address the END regulatory requirements, allowing the dynamic ubiquitous measurement of environmental noise pollution. Following the END, the LIFE DYNAMAP project aims to develop a WASN-based low-cost noise mapping system to monitor the acoustic impact of road infrastructures in real time. Those acoustic events unrelated to regular traffic noise should be removed from the equivalent noise level calculations to avoid biasing the noise map generation. This work describes the different approaches developed within the DYNAMAP project to implement an Anomalous Noise Event Detector on the low-cost sensors of the network, considering both synthetic and real-life acoustic data.Moreover, the paper reflects on several open challenges, discussing how to tackle them for the future deployment of WASN-based noise monitoring systems in real-life operating conditions.