Soundscape Evaluation of a Heritage Event in an Open Environment: The Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia (Spain)

[EN] The acoustic evaluation of indoor environments is common in the application of virtual acoustics. In addition, in the study of cultural heritage buildings, it is a useful tool, but it is not so common when describing the acoustic environment in intangible cultural heritage events and even in outdoor environments. In this paper, the acoustic environment of the Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia (Spain) is studied. It is analyzed from a soundscape perspective, characterizing the sound source and evaluating it within relation to the environment and evaluating its subjective response. With the research carried out, it has been obtained, on the one hand, a complete study of the acoustics of the environment of the Water Tribunal and, on the other, an enhancement of the Valencian tangible and intangible heritage.This research was partially funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, grant number BIA2016-76957-C3-3-R and by the Universitat de Valencia with the grant UV-INV-AE-1550319.Díaz-Rubio, E.; Segura-Garcia, J.; Fayos-Jordan, R.; Cerdá, S.; Cibrián, RM.; Giménez Pérez, A. (2022). Soundscape Evaluation of a Heritage Event in an Open Environment: The Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia (Spain). Applied Sciences. 12(9):1-17. https://doi.org/10.3390/app1209429211712

Accurate estimation of air pollution in outdoor routes for citizens and decision making

There is clear evidence of the effects of air pollution on health. In this paper, we present an innovative application designed to assess Air Quality (AQ) exposure based on the World Health Organization’s AQ Guidelines, analysing pollutants and their concentrations independently. Our aim is to provide this information to citizens based on their health profile (medical history or requirements) before and during outdoor trips of their choice, both walking and cycling, empowering them to proactively make informed personal decisions about their route choices and identifying potentially unhealthy travel environments. For this purpose, we have access to official data from AQ monitoring stations that are updated periodically every 10 min. Then, by using spatial interpolation techniques (with Ordinary Kriging), we estimate each pollutant over a grid superimposed on the city map. Once the pollutants have been mapped on each route, they are analysed in order to consider the different alternatives for deciding and planning changes in speed or trajectory. We evaluated the application in the city of Valencia (Spain) as a use case under different scenarios, and showed the results to assess exposure to pollution on the routes of citizens

VentQsys: Low-cost open IoT system for CO2 monitoring in classrooms

In educational context, a source of nuisance for students is carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration due to closed rooms and lack of ventilation or circulatory air. Also, in the pandemic context, ventilation in indoor environments has been proven as a good tool to control the COVID-19 infections. In this work, it is presented a low cost IoT-based open-hardware and open-software monitoring system to control ventilation, by measuring carbon dioxide (CO2), temperature and relative humidity. This system provides also support for automatic updating, auto-self calibration and adds some Cloud and Edge offloading of computational features for mapping functionalities. From the tests carried out, it is observed a good performance in terms of functionality, battery durability, compared to other measuring devices, more expensive than our proposal

Metodología para la mejora acústica de recintos de culto. Aplicación en la Catedral de Valencia

Los recintos de culto son espacios patrimoniales de gran valor cultural, artístico y arquitectónico. Asimismo, en ellos tienen lugar eventos, integrantes de su patrimonio cultural inmaterial, donde la transmisión del sonido es un factor preferente. Por todo ello, resulta relevante garantizar un adecuado acondicionamiento acústico de los recintos de culto para sus dos usos fundamentales, la música religiosa y la palabra. Para ello, se ha establecido una metodología compuesta por las fases de medición acústica, estudio del comportamiento acústico del recinto, levantamiento y calibración del modelo acústico y simulaciones acústicas. Al tratarse de edificios protegidos, las propuestas de intervención deben basarse en el respeto a los valores patrimoniales de los templos. Con todo ello, en este estudio se ha realizado una propuesta de mejora del acondicionamiento acústico de la Catedral de Valencia

Metodología para la mejora acústica de recintos de culto. Aplicación en la Catedral de Valencia

[ES] Los recintos de culto son espacios patrimoniales de gran valor cultural, artístico y arquitectónico. Asimismo, en ellos tienen lugar eventos, integrantes de su patrimonio cultural inmaterial, donde la transmisión del sonido es un factor preferente. Por todo ello, resulta relevante garantizar un adecuado acondicionamiento acústico de los recintos de culto para sus dos usos fundamentales, la música religiosa y la palabra. Para ello, se ha establecido una metodología compuesta por las fases de medición acústica, estudio del comportamiento acústico del recinto, levantamiento y calibración del modelo acústico y simulaciones acústicas. Al tratarse de edificios protegidos, las propuestas de intervención deben basarse en el respeto a los valores patrimoniales de los templos. Con todo ello, en este estudio se ha realizado una propuesta de mejora del acondicionamiento acústico de la Catedral de Valencia.[EN] Places of worship are heritage spaces of great cultural, artistic and architectural value. Likewise, events take place in them, members of their intangible cultural heritage, where the transmission of sound is a preferential factor. Therefore, it is important to guarantee an adequate acoustic conditioning of the places of worship for its two fundamental uses, religious music and speech. For this, a methodology has been established consisting of the phases of acoustic measurement, study of the acoustic behavior of the enclosure, lifting and calibration of the acoustic model and acoustic simulations. As they are protected buildings, intervention proposals must be based on respect for the heritage values of temples. With all this, in this study a proposal has been made to improve the acoustic conditioning of the Cathedral of Valencia.Este estudio ha sido subvencionado por el Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación a través de los proyectos de investigación BIA2012-36896 y BIA2016-76957-C3-3-RDíaz-Rubio, E.; Montell Serrano, RE.; Cerdá Jordá, S.; Segura Garcia, J.; Cibrián Ortíz De Anda, R.; Barba Sevillano, A.; Lacatis, RG.... (2021). Metodología para la mejora acústica de recintos de culto. Aplicación en la Catedral de Valencia. Revista de Acústica. 52(3 y 4):49-57. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/180498S4957523 y

Elastic Computing in the Fog on Internet of Things to Improve the Performance of Low Cost Nodes

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network widely used with the purpose of connecting almost everything, everywhere to the Internet. To cope with this goal, low cost nodes are being used; otherwise, it would be very expensive to expand so fast. These networks are set up with small distributed devices (nodes) that have a power supply, processing unit, memory, sensors, and wireless communications. In the market, we can find different alternatives for these devices, such as small board computers (SBCs), e.g., Raspberry Pi (RPi)), with different features. Usually these devices run a coarse version of a Linux operating system. Nevertheless, there are many scenarios that require enhanced computational power that these nodes alone are unable to provide. In this context, we need to introduce a kind of collaboration among the devices to overcome their constraints. We based our solution in a combination of clustering techniques (building a mesh network using their wireless capabilities); at the same time we try to orchestrate the resources in order to improve their processing capabilities in an elastic computing fashion. This paradigm is called fog computing on IoT. We propose in this paper the use of cloud computing technologies, such as Linux containers, based on Docker, and a container orchestration platform (COP) to run on the top of a cluster of these nodes, but adapted to the fog computing paradigm. Notice that these technologies are open source and developed for Linux operating system. As an example, in our results we show an IoT application for soundscape monitoring as a proof of concept that it will allow us to compare different alternatives in its design and implementation; in particular, with regard to the COP selection, between Docker Swarm and Kubernetes. We conclude that using and combining these techniques, we can improve the overall computation capabilities of these IoT nodes within a fog computing paradigm

Exploiting multihoming capabilities in 5G-enabled IoT nodes

5G communications allow the integration of different wireless technologies to exploit the added value of multihoming scenarios. Furthermore, in connection with the Internet of Things (IoT), multi-homed nodes are very interesting, since it allows one to address new challenges and adapt the usage of communication technologies to new requirements imposed by the location of each deployment, the available energy resources on each node, and the IoT application itself. There are available commercial wireless nodes that embed and handle multiple interfaces. Terms such as seamless and transparent communications as well as technology integration fit well within the 5G standards. However, in practice, these wireless nodes are basically relayed in one of these wireless technologies when connected, and in the case of using other interfaces, their usage is not coordinated. In this context, we propose and implement a novel and efficient heterogeneous interface selection algorithm for multihoming and integrative communications using commercial products by performing local decisions on a per-packet basis, analysing different issues and approaches from a practical point of view, both hardware and software. We compare our proposal with other alternatives, highlighting the opportunities by exploiting these multihoming features in 5G-enabled IoT nodes

Exploiting Multihoming Capabilities in 5G-Enabled IoT Nodes

5G communications allow the integration of different wireless technologies to exploit the added value of multihoming scenarios. Furthermore, in connection with the Internet of Things (IoT), multi-homed nodes are very interesting, since it allows one to address new challenges and adapt the usage of communication technologies to new requirements imposed by the location of each deployment, the available energy resources on each node, and the IoT application itself. There are available commercial wireless nodes that embed and handle multiple interfaces. Terms such as seamless and transparent communications as well as technology integration fit well within the 5G standards. However, in practice, these wireless nodes are basically relayed in one of these wireless technologies when connected, and in the case of using other interfaces, their usage is not coordinated. In this context, we propose and implement a novel and efficient heterogeneous interface selection algorithm for multihoming and integrative communications using commercial products by performing local decisions on a per-packet basis, analysing different issues and approaches from a practical point of view, both hardware and software. We compare our proposal with other alternatives, highlighting the opportunities by exploiting these multihoming features in 5G-enabled IoT nodes

AI-IoT low-cost pollution-monitoring sensor network to assist citizens with respiratory problems

The proliferation and great variety of low-cost air quality (AQ) sensors, combined with their flexibility and energy efficiency, gives an opportunity to integrate them into Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). However, with these sensors, AQ monitoring poses a significant challenge, as the data collection and analysis process is complex and prone to errors. Although these sensors do not meet the performance requirements for reference regulatory-equivalent monitoring, they can provide informative measurements and more if we can adjust and add further processing to their raw measurements. Therefore, the integration of these sensors aims to facilitate real-time monitoring and achieve a higher spatial and temporal sampling density, particularly in urban areas, where there is a strong interest in providing AQ surveillance services since there is an increase in respiratory/allergic issues among the population. Leveraging a network of low-cost sensors, supported by 5G communications in combination with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques (using Convolutional and Deep Neural Networks (CNN and DNN)) to predict 24-h-ahead readings is the goal of this article in order to be able to provide early warnings to the populations of hazards areas. We have evaluated four different neural network architectures: Multi-Linear prediction (with a dense Multi-Linear Neural Network (NN)), Multi-Dense network prediction, Multi-Convolutional network prediction, and Multi-Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network prediction. To perform the training of the prediction of the readings, we have prepared a significant dataset that is analyzed and processed for training and testing, achieving an estimation error for most of the predicted parameters of around 7.2% on average, with the best option being the Multi-LSTM network in the forthcoming 24 h. It is worth mentioning that some pollutants achieved lower estimation errors, such as CO2 with 0.1%, PM10 with 2.4% (as well as PM2.5 and PM1.0), and NO2 with 6.7%.</p

ECO4RUPA: 5G-IoT Inclusive and Intelligent Routing Ecosystem with Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring

The increase and diversity of low-cost air quality (AQ) sensors, as well as their flexibility and low power consumption, offers us the opportunity to integrate them into broad AQ wireless sensor networks, with the aim of enabling real-time monitoring and higher spatial sampling density of pollution in all parts of cities. Considering that the vast majority of the population lives in cities and the increase in respiratory/allergic problems in a large part of the population, it is of great interest to offer services and applications to improve their quality of life by avoiding pollution exposure in their movements in the open air. In the ECO4RUPA project, we focus on this kind of service, proposing an inclusive and intelligent routing ecosystem carried out using a network of low-cost AQ sensors with the support of 5G communications along with official AQ monitoring stations, using spatial interpolation techniques to enhance its spatial resolution. The goal of this service is to calculate healthy walking and/or cycling routes according to the particular citizen’s profile and needs. We provide and analyse the results of the proposed route planner under different scenarios (different timetables, congestion road traffic, and routes) and different user profiles, with a special interest in citizens with asthma and pregnant women, since both have special needs. In summary, our approach can lead to an approximately average reduction in pollution exposure of 17.82% while experiencing an approximately average increase in distance travelled of 9.8%