THUD: Total Hearing Unintrusive Device
What is THUD?
THUD is an IoT device that records sound and vibration levels at construction sites. The device was built with the Intel Edison and receives data from the various sensors (i.e. Grove Sensors: Sound, piezo vibration, accelerometer). The Intel Edison hardware is coupled with our software application that manages the operation of the sensors, compiles and visualises analytics, and reports the data in the cloud on a current, daily, weekly, and monthly frequency.
Why?
1.3 million people in the UK are affected by noise pollution. There is a clear health link between exposure to prolonged loud noise and permanent hearing loss and tinnitus.
Construction companies and site foremen are required to ensure their sites meet development conditions with noise and vibration. Violations can result in fines and closing of sites.
THUD can be used as a multiple-site monitoring device, as well as an assurance device in development applications (as a way to display commitment to sound mitigation).
Although construction sites are the leading cause of excessive noice levels, THUD can also be used in pubs/clubs, transport hubs (e.g. airports), entertainment venues, traffic, and noisy neighbours.
Council's have a legal obligation to ensure their residents are not exposed to excessive noise during business hours, and ensuring construction noise ceases during morning and evening times.
In 2015, 100,000 noise complaints were received from residents about Heathrow Airport alone.
Isn't there already a solution in place?
The United Kingdom's current solution deals with noise pollution on a wider scale. They track the noise pollutants using sound emission contour maps. These are good to see what a city's wider noise pollution profile is like, but is grossly insufficient to identify noise issues at certain locations/venues and for specific time frames.
Noise violations are monitored by individual council staff being sent out to sites to take sound samples. This is labour intensive and an inaccurate way to test noise violations and occupational health exposure over time.
How is it different?
THUD is site specific. It is placed within the construction site and left to monitor during the entire construction period. The low cost of the hardware means multiple sites can be monitored simultaneously without actual employees monitoring. THUD can be installed in place by the construction site foreman by choice or monitoring could be imposed by a council on a site due to number complaints received about the site.
THUD deals with specific instances of noise pollution. It shows where and when noise exceeds the acceptable level and will allow construction foreman to pinpoint where and when a noise violation is occuring so that it can be mitigated in line with regulations.
As the dashboard is an open dashboard, residents can also view the sites noise status (green: fully compliant, yellow: partially compliant, red: non-compliant) and the specific location's council sound regulations. And on this basis, residents can file a noise compliant only when it is appropriate.
How does it work?
THUD works by using Intel Edison to process the Grove sensor data (sound, vibration, movement). The information is sent to Hapi servers, and then displayed on our front-end dashboard using HTML5, Javascript, Chart JS.
