Monitoring Noise
The Munisense INSIGHTNOW™ Noise Portal is the most comprehensive online platform for noise management currently available.
By focusing on the application and cloud functionality, it is fully optimized for remote measurement.
Its versatility and focus on the most important sources of noise make it widely applicable. The functionalities are continuously developed and enhanced, with the primary goal of giving everyone involved control over noise. This also means that certain functionalities are not yet being used for many applications.
Core Concepts
To support the large number of applications and users, the INSIGHTNOW™ platform is built around the following concepts:
- Measuring points: these are abstractions of the measurement location, where all the location's properties and metadata are recorded.
- Users and roles: authorized individuals can be granted access to the platform. A role determines the user's rights and access to the measurement data.
- Groups: this is a powerful concept that allows users and measurement points to be grouped together. Groups, along with a user's role, determine access to metadata and measurement data.
- Noise Monitoring Stations (NMS): These are linked to measurement points. During this link, the measurement data is available in real time.
- Dashboards: Here, the measurement data is converted into usable information for the user's role. Over 40 dashboards are available.
Noise Values
The Munisense Noise Monitoring Stations (NMS) provide measurement data; by default, these are noise values per second or minute. Nearly all European noise parameters are measured and made available.
In addition to noise levels, the 1/3 octave bands from 10 Hz to 20 kHz are available (depending on the NMS type).
The percentiles L00.5, L01, L05, L10, L25, L50, L75, L90, L95, L99, and L99.5 are reported on the hour, derived from the LAF and LAS values that are internally available 8 times per second. In addition to the above, the Lday, Levening, Lnight, and Lden are calculated and reported in the NMS.
All measurement data is time-stamped. Time is synchronized via NTP, the operator, or GPS and has a deviation of 0 to 50 milliseconds. The Sound Indicators are accurate to the microsecond.
Some NMSs support the connection of a weather station, which measures and reports local meteorological conditions.
The Sound Indicators also report the direction of the dominant sound in both horizontal and vertical directions, allowing them to locate the sound source.
Measurement data is sent in real time and stored locally, ensuring no data is lost. Specific measurement data can be available in the INSIGHTNOW™ Platform within 1 to 2 seconds.
Audiostreaming and storage
Audio can be recorded and streamed in near-real time. Several privacy safeguards are in place to prevent personally identifiable data from being accessed. These features are available in the platform and in most NMSs.
Audio is available in two qualities:
- Compressed Audio. This is intended to be displayed and listened to in synchronization with the graphs during analysis. This audio is sent in 10-minute blocks, if configured.
- High-quality uncompressed WAV data. The NPx NMSs support this. This data is stored locally and retrieved via the platform in time slots. There is also an option to automatically retrieve WAV data for noise events.
Noise Events
The Munisense noise monitoring stations support the unique ability to detect and report noise events. For this purpose, the NMS and the INSIGHTNOW™ Platform support peak detection.
Within defined peaks, the source of the noise can also be classified using ML models. The sound event report includes all important acoustic characteristics, including rise and fall times, SEL values, and labels of recognized sound sources. It supports, among other things, the ISO 20906 standard for (aircraft) passage sounds.
The NMS can be remotely equipped with new ML models to support sound recognition in new environments.
Noise event detection can be fully configured from the platform and set to the events of interest for the measurement. For example, counting vehicle passages, peak noise during sports activities (such as paddle tennis), peak noise from nighttime noise, etc.
Hardware Management
Parallel to the noise data, all NMS report information about their own status. Such as GPS location, battery and power supply voltage, temperature and humidity, and incidents (e.g., tampering/fraud). Alarms can be set based on this data, allowing for proactive responses.
All measurement data can be analyzed, visualized, reported, and exported in various ways via the dashboards.
Threshold Values and Notifications
The INSIGHTNOW™ Platform offers extensive functionality to notify systems or users when thresholds are exceeded. Threshold values are set at the measuring point and can be configured differently for different periods of the day, using a user-friendly interface. For construction noise, alerts for potential budget overruns are available.
Notifications can be sent to one or more users, with each user able to choose whether or not to receive them. Threshold value exceedances and sent notifications are recorded and reported.
Notifications can be sent as SMS, email, or triggers via the AMQP message bus interface.
Correlation Function between Source and Receiver
When monitoring music events or industrial noise, it is essential to be certain that the measured noise and any exceedance at the immission point (e.g., a home) actually originates from the event or industry, and not from a local source.
To determine this clearly, the INSIGHTNOW™ Platform offers functionality that can demonstrate the correlation between different measurement points. This functionality is available for peak noise (peak correlation: exceeding LAmax in industrial environments, for example, or exceeding a progressive LAeq value in musical events (spectral correlation)).
With these correlation functions, noise can be attributed to a source at a distance of more than 1 kilometer.
Dashboards
The INSIGHTNOW™ Platform offers a wide range of dashboards, often tailored to the user's application and role. These dashboards present measurement data or statistics in a clear and understandable way on maps, graphs, and histograms.
Specific dashboards are available for:
- Music Event Management
- Hospitality
- Construction and Industry
- Road and Rail Traffic
- Complaint Analysis
- Insight into the Quality of the Sound Environment
- Citizen (Participation) - Comprehensive Insight into the Sound Environment with GLIMI
- Sound Events (Statistics)
Security Policy and Privacy Guarantees
Measuring in public spaces places high demands on security policies to ensure the ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability, and resilience of processing systems and services. This is in addition to the measures to protect citizen privacy, as stipulated in the GDPR guidelines.
The above is guaranteed by Munisense's certified ISO 9001 and ISO 41001 management processes. Our IT and information security processes are secured by complying with ISO 27001 guidelines. We are happy to provide you with an overview of our security policy.
To protect privacy, Munisense noise monitoring systems and the INSIGHTNOW™ Platform have extensive functionalities to ensure this as effectively as possible. Audio storage/recording, which is potentially personally identifiable data, can be configured in accordance with the processing agreements or excluded entirely. Some Munisense monitoring systems have the option to disable cloud storage of audio upon detection of intelligible speech.
Munisense supports its clients with Data Protection Impact Assessments, Privacy Impact Assessments, and the preparation of data processing agreements.
