Sabadell starts a campaign open to citizens to draw the sound landscape of the city. Sons de Sabadell is an acoustic citizen science initiative co-organized by the Sabadell City Council and La Salle-URL. Interested people can participate through their mobile device until April 30.
The procedure for adding elements to the sound map of the city is very simple. The first step is to look for places in the city or in the forest where pleasant sounds (natural, human or artificial) can be found. The next step is to record the sound with a small video in horizontal format of about 30 seconds, without any recognizable faces or voices appearing. Finally, it is necessary to upload the video to the platform enabled by La Salle-URL, co-organizer of the campaign. This mechanism will allow to obtain quantitative and qualitative data of the sounds in the city.
Five primary schools actively participate in the project, with students between the ages of 10 and 14 who have received specific training. In these cases, an acoustic discovery of the environment of the educational center has been made. Apart from this, Sons de Sabadell remains open to all citizens, since the active participation of the non-specialized public is sought, along with professionals from the world of science and research. On the other hand, the experience will be presented next April at the 4th Congress of Acoustics of Catalonia, in Granollers, within the framework of a round table specialized in citizen science and environmental acoustics.
Born from Sons al Balcó
Sons de Sabadell is an evolution of the Sons al Balcó project, co-led by ISGlobal and La Salle-URL during the years 2020 and 2021. This pioneering initiative has collected soundscapes from all over Catalonia and continues to study the impact of confinement on the sound perception of citizens , also at the present time back to normal.
