Page 67 - Fall_DTF

Sound
Perspectives
The Acoustical Society of
America and International
Noise Awareness Day
L. Keeta Iones Since 1996, the Center for Hearing and Communication (CHC; chchearing.org)
Addmr has been ra.ising public awareness of noise on the welfare and health of people
_ ' by creating and encouraging everyone to take part in International Noise Aware-
Educauon and Omread‘ ness Day (INAD) on the last Thursday in April. This year, for the 23rd INAD, the
C°°'di“at°' Acoustical Society of America (ASA) was determined to take part and support
AC°“5“C31 5°d“Y °f Amema the CHC. Beginning in Ianuary, 2018, four ASA members from Task Force 1 pro-
1305 W31‘ whnma“ R°“d posed INAD plans and by mid-February, the group had grown and developed
5'1“? 300 a plan of action that would allow the public to participate in different activities
M51Vi115: New York 1174774300 throughout the entire month of April.
USA Our first goal was to let people know what the ASA was doing to commemorate
Email: INAD and so we created a webpage (acousticstodayorg/INAD2018) to lay out all
kjones@aC0usticalsociety_org activities for the month. We also included helpful noise-related resources for in-
terested parties to find out even more information about noise. In addition to the
website, a Twitter and Facebook social media campaign was started to regularly
tweet and post about ASA INAD activities and encourage participation. Through
the Twitter account, the ASA interacted with other organizations and individu-
als taking part in the INAD. The last stage in spreading the word about the ASA
INAD month was to send an email in late March to ASA members with informa-
tion about how to get involved. Thanks to this social media and email campaign,
the webpage had nearly 2,000 visitors from March through April.
Here is what the Task Force 1 committee planned and achieved for the INAD:
Starting in late March, everyone was encouraged to download and use the iOS
SoundPrint App (soundprint.co) to review the noise levels of restaurants as a way
to take part in citizen science. Citizen science projects are generally defined by the
collection and/or analysis of data by members of the general public. This phone
app allows users to measure a venue’s loudness and submit it for the public and
has been called the “Yelp for noise.” Users of the app were also encouraged to
read the Proceedings of the Meetings on Acoustics (POMA) paper “Analyses of
Crowd-Sourced Sound Levels of Restaurants and Bars in New York City,” au-
thored by Gregory Farber, the creator of the SoundPrint App, and Lily Wang
(asa.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.112 1/2 .0000674). The POMA article received nearly
100 visits from the Exp1oreSound.org website.
I.n addition to the citizen science activity using SoundPrint, the public was invited
to watch the movie In Pursuit of Silence (pursuitofsilencecom). This fil.rn, directed
by Patrick Shen, explores “our relationship with silence, sound, and the impact
of noise on our lives.” We also encouraged those who watched the film to further
reflect on the topics by using the discussion guide created for the film. The Ex-
ploreSound website directed more than 100 visitors to the film website.
Finally, on April 25, 2018, the oflicial 23rd anniversary of the INAD, the ASA
hosted a two-hour YouTube live stream session consisting of five expert panelists
and a moderator (Figure 1) to discuss all things related to noise. Everyone was
encouraged to post comments and questions for our panelists on the website or to
tweet them using #ASAINAD2018. With questions in hand, we created a simple
@2l718Acousz1caISociezy afnmerica. All right: reserved. volume 14, issuej 1 173112013 | Acoustic: Today | es