Smart Cities for Health

Using crowd-sourced “big data” to tackle noise pollution in a rapidly growing city

August 16, 2018

Andy Hong, PhD
Lead Urban Health Scientist
George Institute for Global Health
University of Oxford

A little bit about me

  • Lead Urban Health Scientist at the University of Oxford
  • Co-founder of Healthy Cities Network
  • Studied informatics, urban planning, and public health
  • More info @ andyhong.org
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Today's Agenda

  1. Smart cities and Internet of Things
  2. Open data, open government
  3. Application of open data: Noise 311
  4. Implications and way forward

1. Smart cities

What is a smart city?

U-city vs. Smart City

U-City Smart City
  • Infrastructure (supply)
  • Public sector
  • Government-driven
  • Data focus (demand)
  • Public-Private
  • Open governance
  • Wired connection
  • Centralized system and server-based
  • Proprietary software and hardware
  • Wireless and 5G
  • Distributed system and web-based
  • Open source software and hardware

Data is the fuel for smart cities

Real-time sensors = Big data

Example: City Sensor

Smart cities = smart citizens

  • Citizens are enablers: government provides a platform, people do the rest
  • Citizens are scientists: open source software & hardware
  • Citizens are data generators: crowdsourcing
  • Citizens are service providers: sharing economy
  • Citizens are data users: open data platform

2. Open data

Open data, open government

  • Open data movement
  • Smart cities, smart government
  • More than 200 US cities/counties have open data
  • Big cities leading the open data movement

NYC open data

New school, new era

Vancouver open data

3. Application of Open data

Noise 311 study

Hong et al. 2018. Noise and the City

Construction noise

Serious Annoyance

Sources of urban noise

Vancouver 311 call center

  • Garbage disposal
  • Road maintanenance
  • Graffiti removal
  • Noise complaints
  • ...

Major Constructions

Construction and noise

Heatmap of construction

Heatmap of noise complaints

Statistical approach

Model results

Noise by-laws in Vancouver

Noise during after hours

Squeaky Wheels?

4. Way forward

Policy Implications

  • Gap between policy and reality
  • Noise by-laws, not a good deterrent

Policy Implications

  • Potential of crowd-sourced data
  • Potential of big data platform

Multi-city noise sensing

Future Research

Potential Collaboration

  • Pollution-free, stress-free city study
  • Comparative study of Seoul and London
  • Air/noise/water pollution and health
  • Between-floor noise (층간소음) study
  • Healthy cities conference in Korea?

healthycitiesnetwork.com

Thank you

You can access this presentation at: urbanhealthdata.github.io

Citizen complaints data

More detailed data from NYC