Kriging-based spatial interpolation from measurements for sound level mapping in urban areas

Network-based sound monitoring systems are deployed in various cities over the world and mobile applications allowing participatory sensing are now common. Nevertheless, the sparseness of the collected measurements, either in space or in time, complicates the production of sound maps. This paper describes the results of a measurement campaign that has been conducted in order to test different spatial interpolation strategies for producing sound maps. Mobile measurements have been performed while walking multiple times in every street of the XIIIth district of Paris. By adaptively constructing a noise map on the basis of these measurements, the role of the density of observations and the performance of four different interpolation strategies is investigated. Ordinary and universal Kriging methods are assessed, as well as the effect of using an alternative definition of the distance between observation locations, which takes the topology of the road network into account. The results show that a high density of observation points is necessary to obtain an interpolated sound map close to the reference map.