The SENSEable Pisa Project: Citizen‐Participation in Monitoring Acoustic Climate of Mediterranean City Centers

The concept of urban sustainability and liveability closely depends on multi‐level approaches to environmental issues. The ultimate goal in the field of noise management is to involve citizens and facilitate their participation in urban environmental decisions. The SENSEable Pisa project, based on the concept of Real‐Time City and Smart City, presents an acoustic urban monitoring system based on a low‐cost data acquisition method for a pervasive outdoor noise measurement. The system is based on the use of noise sensors located on private houses in the center of Pisa, which provide a good model for the current acoustic climate of Mediterranean city centers. In this study, SENSEable acquisitions show a strong anthropogenic component not revealed by public strategic maps. The anthropogenic component, commonly known as movida, becomes increasingly critical in Mediterranean cities, therefore, it is necessary to explore methods highlighting this new source and to adopt strategies for the creation of reliable noise pollution maps. The SENSEable Pisa Project performed an acoustic urban monitoring of Pisa, a typical Mediterranean city. It used low‐cost real‐time noise sensors placed on facades of citizen's houses and connected to their own Wi‐Fi access points. The results show an important influence of anthropogenic noise in the center of Pisa, not revealed by official maps.