The ICM researcher presented in the competition an infographic about the noise pollution of the school environments in Barcelona.
The ICM researcher Marta Royo-Llonch has been a finalist in the World DataViz Challenge 2020 Barcelona-Kobe data visualization competition, which in this year's edition sought to detect problems in Barcelona related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) marked by the UN and, through the analysis and visualization of open access data, provide solutions to solve them.
Dr. Royo-Llonch presented an infographic to the competition in which she analysed the noise pollution of the city's school environments. "My goal was to detect those neighborhoods with a higher number of schools vulnerable to noise pollution, that is, where resources and corrective measures should be prioritized", states the researcher.
"While it is true that, in general, schools have noise insulation systems, due to the situation caused by COVID-19, a scenario in which it is necessary to ventilate the classrooms by opening windows, this insulation has been broken, which has affected the education’s quality, that varies depending on the acoustic levels to which schools are exposed”, details Dr. Royo-Llonch.
Noise pollution in schools in Barcelona
According to the infographic presented by the researcher, more than half of the city's schools are located in areas with noise levels above the 60 decibel limit established in the "Plan for the reduction of noise pollution 2010-2020" of the Barcelona City Hall. In fact, in the Eixample and Sant Martí districts there are six educational centres in areas where daytime noise pollution is almost harmful, reaching up to 80 decibels. In addition, there are 24 neighborhoods with a higher than average number of vulnerable schools. Among them, Les Corts, El Raval, La Vila de Gràcia, Sant Andreu and Sants can be highlighted.
"Looking at the representation of the sound environment of vulnerable schools on the map, we can suggest that the main cause of noise pollution may be traffic, although more specific analyses would be needed to confirm this", concludes the ICM researcher, who has created a website to check the data and the code to generate the analysis, including a short video explaining the whole research process.
World DataViz Challenge winners
In this edition of the World Data Viz Challenge, jointly organized by Barcelona and the Japanese city of Kobe, the visualization "Educational Level of the Population of Barcelona", where two young university students study the relationship between the educational level of the citizenry and their socio-economic situation and gender, was awarded the first prize.
For the call held in parallel in Kobe, the first prize was given to the visualization "Visualizing City Parks", which seeks to encourage Kobe citizens to go more to the parks. To achieve this, the project aims to provide citizens with real-time information on the activities that can be done in those parks.
In the Barcelona call, the other finalist projects, including the one of Marta about noise pollution, invite to reflect on topics such as housing, domestic violence, mobility or the concept of the multi-service city. All of them can be consulted through the Open Data Barcelona website.
The final awards ceremony took place virtually last December 3rd through Youtube. Throughout the event, both the winners and finalists from each of the cities were able to present their projects. They also had the opportunity to network and share their impressions and experiences.
Marta’s finalist infographics on vulnerability to noise of schools in Barcelona can be downloaded here.
