Nature-SmartCities and Edinburgh CitySounds: Exploring the Urban Soundscape

Are you interested in learning how new advances in technology can help us understand biodiversity and how the health of the urban greenspace contributes to the wellbeing of us all?

This public event will highlight the work of two projects that are carrying out research into urban ‘soundscapes’. Nature-Smart Cities is monitoring bats in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, while Edinburgh CitySounds is exploring a variety of sounds to assess biodiversity in the Meadows. The presentations will be aimed at a general audience, so you don’t need to be a ‘geek’ to take part in the event.

The first half of the event will contain brief talks about the projects, the technologies they are using, the ways they are engaging with the public, and what they are learning about biodiversity and acoustic monitoring. The second half will be an interactive session in which you can share your ideas and questions about opportunities for learning about nature, biodiversity and greenspaces in the city, as well as your feedback and thoughts about the CitySounds project.

Schedule

5pm - Doors open

5:30-6:30pm - Nature-Smart Cities and Edinburgh CitySounds - what we are doing and how we are doing it

Break

6:45-7:45pm - What do we want to learn about our nature, biodiversity and green spaces in our city, and how can new digital technologies and network infrastructure help us to learn new things?

Nature-Smart Cities brings together environmental researchers and technologists to develop the world’s first end-to-end open source system for monitoring bat activity in one of the most iconic and high profile of London’s regeneration areas, the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It has developed a network of prototype smart bat monitors and installed them across the park in different habitats. The monitors will continuously capture data on bat species and activity levels until the end of the year. It is hoped that this exploratory network of devices will provide the most detailed picture yet of bat life throughout this large urban area. See live data coming from the smart bat monitors here.

Edinburgh CitySounds is exploring and celebrating the richness of sounds in the city, benefiting from recent innovations in digital technology and network infrastructure. It is looking at how biotic and anthropogenic sounds captured in a central urban greenspace 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. It is one of 17 experiments selected for the second phase of OrganiCity, a service for experimentation that explores how citizens, businesses and city authorities can work together to create digital solutions to urban challenges.

This is the first of two workshops on the CitySounds project. The second workshop will take place in early March (date TBC) and will involve hands-on experiments using different types of audio data to identify and communicate about sounds in the city.

Cover photo by Benjamin Brock - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32970617