<aside> âšī¸ A written summary of the entire SONYC curriculum and its purpose, including engineering connections and "how to use this document".
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**SONYC (Sounds of New York City)** is a research project housed at New York University's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) with collaborators across NYU as well as at the Ohio State University. Formed in 2013, the SONYC team studies the acquisition, analysis, classification, and visualization of urban noise. The project uses a combination of fixed sensors, computer analysis (using a technique called machine learning), and citizen scientists to help better understand noise pollution - how to monitor for it more effectively, how to classify it in a way that better reflects its impact, and how to mitigate it in a way that benefits everyone. SONYC has received $4.6M in support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through its Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) program, and is conducted in partnership with multiple city agencies in New York City, most notably the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The DEP is responsible for developing and enforcing the city's Noise Code, which lays out what constitutes an unacceptable amount of noise in the city.
As the SONYC FAQ points out, "New York City is noisy." So noisy, in fact, that half a million complaints about noise were logged in 2019 through the city's 311 system - far more than any other kind of complaint. Most New Yorkers are exposed to some form of noise pollution on a daily basis but, frustratingly, have very little control over it. Urban noise can be hard to locate, difficult to describe, and transient in nature - three things that make civc noise ordinances and noise pollution laws incredibly difficult to enforce. As a result, noise is often taken for granted as part of the cost of living in New York, or any large city. Lumped in along with the smells, the traffic, and the rent as things we all complain to each other about, we never really expect anyone to fix it.
Noise is bad for you. It's bad for everyone - in 1999, the World Health Organization declared noise-related hearing loss to be "the most prevalent irreversible occupational hazard" in the world. Beyond hearing loss, noise causes increased stress and anxiety, and can contribute to long-term health effects such as hypertension. In children, chronic exposure to noise pollution - such as living within the auditory flight path of an airport or next to an elevated subway - can cause a raft of cognitive issues including decreased memory.
The objective of SONYC is to provide New York City, and by extension cities across the country and around the world, with a raft of tools and techniques to identify, classify, and map different kinds of noise, from traffic sirens to construction equipment to faulty HVAC machinery. One of the most important techniques we've explored is the use of citizen science - having the people of the city, including young people, actively engaged in listening, capturing, and tagging noise as a pollutant in their neighborhoods, learning how to talk about it at school, at work, and at the community and government level, and come up with human- and community-centered solutions that work for everyone, rather than regulations that are impossible to enforce.
This curriculum, developed by NYU students in collaboration with the SONYC team and the Center for K-12 STEM Education at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering, is an indispensable part of the SONYC toolkit - by getting school-age children engaged on noise, we can help empower a new generation of advocates for a quieter, less stressful city. Along the way, students learn important (and NGSS-aligned) skills around the physics of sound, the electronics involved in measuring it, the engineering of recording it, and the computer science of manipulating it inside the computer. Noise pollution aside, these skills, if developed, can lead to incredible careers in audio and beyond - in recording engineering, sound design, and broadcast engineering for music, television, film, and radio; electrical engineering and signal processing for industries ranging from human telecommunications to audio forensics to auditory display; research in seismology, meteorology, astronomy, and anywhere else where there are signals that need to be sensed and analyzed.
How to Use this Document:
<aside> âšī¸ The age range and context for which this curriculum has been designed
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This curriculum is designed for SONYC instructors working with middle school age students in New York City as part of a two-week summer camp.
<aside> âšī¸ A compilation of the educational standards that are addressed within this curriculum, distinguished by track
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