Smart soundscape sensing: A low-cost and integrated sensing system for urban soundscape ecology research

Worldwide, cities are increasingly taking the burden of accommodating an extra population. It is undergoing the most extensive anthropogenic transformation of the landscape, the most predominant modification of biogeochemical processes, and the most intensive alteration of biological communities. These severe ecological stresses in cities urgently call for research on the coupled natural-human urban ecosystem. Soundscape, containing anthropogenic, biological, and geological elements, can provide rich information on natural and artificial environment. However, the main challenge is the discontinuity, high cost, and low efficiency of the existing manual acquisition and computation methods. It will limit the utilization of the mass data collected by the existing soundscape acquisition equipment, with the failure to reveal the pattern and dynamics included in the soundscape, in the meantime will obstruct the promising avenue for environmental research from the auditory perspective. Given the challenges, this paper introduces an innovative Smart Soundscape Sensing (SSS) system based on the intelligent sensor network and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The technology fulfills three significant breakthroughs: (a) integrated data acquisition based on a multithreaded acquisition strategy; (b) efficient data transmission and storage based on alternative transmission modes and storage protocols; (c) multifunctional data analysis and visualization based on automatic computation and AI technologies. Results prove that SSS can effectively uncover the evolution of soundscape and its environment, and surpass traditional hand-crafted methods, especially in long-term projects. Applying such an integrated and intelligent system can facilitate drawing out hidden insights within the soundscape, refining urban sound environment planning, and delivering a sustainable future. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).