Closure Report and lessons learned

Project Summary:

This project was primarily funded by OrganiCity, a service for experimentation that explores how citizens, businesses and city authorities can work together to create digital solutions to urban challenges. OrganiCity experiments take place in cities across Europe. We continued to run the infrastructure and capture data after the OrganiCity funding period ended, such that we have a complete 12 months of data.

The project deployed x6 audio capture devices to the Meadows in Edinburgh to capture audio as a valuable first step in exploring and celebrating the richness of sounds in the city, benefiting from recent innovations in digital technology and network infrastructure. It will focus on how biotic (living organisms like plants and animals) and anthropogenic (human activity) sounds captured in a central urban green space can inform community groups and citizens about biodiversity and health and well-being, as well as provide a unique resource for artists and data scientists. Wide-frequency audio was captured in near real-time for secure privacy processing and analysis. The team constructed sensor kits that enabled the capture of the rich array of biotic and anthropogenic sounds in both the audible and ultrasonic range. Given the nature of the deployment (microphones in a public space), the project ensured that appropriate steps were taken to ensure adherence to data protection legislation, and this will include a process to obfuscate any human speech captured by the devices, such that it is unintelligible, and no individuals could be identified. Anonymised audio data was made available to other registered OrganiCity experimenters. This project was led by Edinburgh Living Lab, a city-wide collaboration founded by the City of Edinburgh Council and the University of Edinburgh.

End of project summary

The objectives and deliverables defined in the project brief were successfully completed, with one minor change. Rather than publishing data via a dedicated server in a UoE network DMZ, data was shared with via the overall OrganiCity programme website, and a link to this was published in a final report.

Benefit realisation:

Partnerships

Despite its modest scope, the project fostered the first ever research collaboration between a unique set of cross-disciplinary, cross-sector partners. Within the University, the collaboration spans from Information Services and Informatics through to Biological Sciences and The Reid School of Music. Out with the University, it comprises all the partners of The Edinburgh Living Landscape,[1] as led by Scottish Wildlife Trust; community groups led by and associated with Friends of the Meadows and Bruntsfield Links; and the cultural organisation New Media Scotland.

Talent

Two undergraduate students were been co-opted into the project team to help construct the Audio Capture Devices and are broadening their skills base and understanding of the value of wide spectrum audio data.
An Informatics PhD student was responsible for the design and implementation of the voice scrambling technique, and has consequently acquired greater understanding of the state of the art in speech obfuscation as well as experience of participating in a highly interdisciplinary, cross-sector research project.
A PhD student from School of Biology with a background in biodiversity acted as an intermediary between the project and one of the stakeholder groups and is gaining increased awareness of the value of IoT and audio data in monitoring biodiversity.
Via two community engagement workshops organised by the project, citizen science and voluntary groups gained tools for increased data literacy and awareness of the value of IoT and audio data in monitoring biodiversity.
Our approach for audio capture informed how we could build it into a suite of IoT tools and sensor data for incorporation into the science and maths curriculum for schools in the city region. We also explored how selected audio could be made available for integration into the map resources being developed by the Edina DigiScience initiative.

Research

The project team submitted a paper on the project for the 3^rd International Conference on Smart Data and Smart Cities (Delft, October 2018).
Members of the team, including external partners, submit a bid to the Nesta “Rethinking Parks” call.
A PhD studentship in the School of Biology was made available to carry out research on ultrasonic data being captured by the project.
Tim Van Dam, founder of InternetOfLife (which uses IoT for ‘smart parks; and protection of endangered animals) is interested in deploying the CitySounds technology into a national park in Africa.

Adoption

Experience gained in the project will help inform and develop the design of our broader sensor network we are seeking to deploy as part of the City Region Deal. A microphone with embedded intelligence on board[2] could be included within the composite sensor device that will be deployed at scale across the region.

Datasets

The project produced a unique collection of rich data, containing broad spectrum audio (0Hz to 96KHz) in FLAC format. This project-generated dataset has the potential to kick-start a cluster of new research activities within the University, including the development of statistical classifiers for the emerging field of “machine hearing”.

The availability of better audio classifiers will underpin efforts to embed more intelligence into microphone-enabled edge devices. This would greatly broaden the scope for deploying audio capture devices and allow them to be connected to a LPWAN rather than requiring Wi-Fi. It is anticipated that such devices will be more manageable from a privacy-preserving perspective, and could thus be made more easily available to citizen science groups, as well as schools for a STEM curriculum topic centred on the environment and biodiversity monitoring.

Entrepreneurship

The project was set up to support citizen science, and had no specific objective to stimulate entrepreneurship.

Lessons learned.

No: 01 Title: Impact on Wi-Fi signal from leaves in trees.

Description: We did not expect the impact on Wi-Fi signal from leaves on the trees. Devices were tested while there were no leaves on the trees and when they arrived, the signal was impacted. Location of the Wi-Fi receiver, and positioning of the antenna could have been better. Receiver’s for transmitters in trees needs to be low enough to receive from under the leaf canopy.

Recommendations: Receiver’s for transmitters in trees needs to be low enough to receive from under the leaf canopy. If we engages re any fitting in buildings, we need to be in contact with end engineer – we need direct engagement.