Beacon Hill Seattle Noise – A community-led citizen science project
Author: Mahdi Yazdani
Description: The Beacon Hill Seattle Community Noise Team is a group of residents focused on addressing the public health risk posed by excessive noise pollution. The team documents noise levels in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle for the purpose of providing relevant local, state, and federal officials with the necessary data to make informed decisions on policies that relate to noise and the health of Beacon Hill residents. Aircraft noise over Beacon Hill Seattle recorded in a greenbelt well separated from roadways (more videos).Normal conversation volume is about 60 dB.Individual aircraft can be in 70-90 dB range or 10-30 dB greater than conversation level.10-30 dB greater than conversation level is 100% to 800% louder. The data collection complies with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) requirements. Open access is provided to our licensed data and we invite researchers and other interested parties to use the data for analyses and other pur [cell cut: 1666 characters, first 1000 kept]

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The Beacon Hill Seattle Community Noise Team is a group of residents focused on addressing the public health risk posed by excessive noise pollution. The team documents noise levels in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Seattle for the purpose of providing relevant local, state, and federal officials with the necessary data to make informed decisions on policies that relate to noise and the health of Beacon Hill residents.

- Aircraft noise over Beacon Hill Seattle recorded in a greenbelt well separated from roadways (more videos).
- Normal conversation volume is about 60 dB.
- Individual aircraft can be in 70-90 dB range or 10-30 dB greater than conversation level.
- 10-30 dB greater than conversation level is 100% to 800% louder.

The data collection complies with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) requirements. Open access is provided to our licensed data and we invite researchers and other interested parties to use the data for analyses and other purposes.

In 2018, the team collaborated with research advisors at the University of Washington on a citizen science project to collect high-quality noise measurements throughout Beacon Hill, including outside the homes of many residents who volunteered to host meters. More than 1 GB of data were collected, and the results of noise study are summarized in the team’s final report. This is the first project to collect quality assured 24 hour noise measurement data throughout Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood over a period of several months.

Download the noise study fact sheet or full report. Visit the interactive noise map.

Contact us at rml.beaconhill@gmail.com