[Research Sample 3]
The following two projects demonstrate my trans-disciplinary work applying psychoacoustic principles learned through acoustic ecology and deep listening to current environmental challenges. This work is motivated the ways in which listening can positively impact community engagement in climate change mitigation and in managing important, endangered animal populations across the globe
Over the past two years I have been leading a project in collaboration with the Phoenix Zoo to develop an automatic gunshot detection system to assist with the protection of endangered species in a large wildlife preserve in Costa Rica. Las Alturas Del Bosque Verde is a privately owned, ten-thousand hectare (24,171 acres) animal sanctuary in the Puntarenas region of Southern Costa Rica, bordering the country of Panama. Although its abundant levels of relatively rare species, such as white-lipped peccary and jaguar are positives, these precious animals are subject to poaching.
In 2017-2019 working with Digital Culture masters student, Kyle Hoefer (pictured above in Costa Rica) who focused his masters research on the development of anti-poaching technology; and in particular, to systems and methods for low-cost automated gunshot detection and localization for anti-poaching initiatives. This work came out of initial experiments I undertook which examined how psychoacoustic parameters might characterize a gunshot on small, low powered microprocessors. The prototype tested in Costa Rica in late 2018 produced a total of 97.75% accuracy within the dense rainforest environment.
I refined that approach and currently have engineering student workers building 20 units for deployment in Costa Rica by the Phoenix Zoo in May/June 2020.
Recently I was awarded a US patent (#63/000,736) for this method. The interest in controlling the IP is to make it available to economically challenged organizations in Africa and elsewhere to greatly reduce poaching of endangered species in nature preserves.
ASU Now recently published a short story on the project - ASU professor secures US patent for anti-poaching gunshot detection device
I refined that approach and currently have engineering student workers building 20 units for deployment in Costa Rica by the Phoenix Zoo in May/June 2020.
Recently I was awarded a US patent (#63/000,736) for this method. The interest in controlling the IP is to make it available to economically challenged organizations in Africa and elsewhere to greatly reduce poaching of endangered species in nature preserves.
ASU Now recently published a short story on the project - ASU professor secures US patent for anti-poaching gunshot detection device
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The second project applying psychoacoustic is EcoSonics - Psychoacoustic applications for climate impact prediction and management. The EcoSonic Project involved a team of environmental scientists, engineers and artists, including students and citizen scientists in the monitoring and gathering of important sonic data at several critical McDowell Sonoran Preserve scientific research sites in north eastern Scottsdale, Arizona. The preserve is the largest urban fringe preserve in the Northern hemisphere.
The project objectives were to develop Sound Quality Metrics that reveal the overall sound quality measures. The EcoSonic Project seeks to determine whether a toolkit can be developed to assist scientists in gauging environmental transformation due to climate change and land use though acoustic ecology. We hypothesize that these tools may indicate the overall impact on environmental health earlier than traditional ecological metrics would allow. The poster bellow indicates that machine learning was used to create a tool that was effective at predicting future environmental impact based on a previous body of environmental sound recordings. This indicates very positive potential to refine our work to produce a tool to monitor and predict climate impact from sounds alone, thereby substantially reducing the human hours involved in current monitoring and producing a more reliable outcome.
The project objectives were to develop Sound Quality Metrics that reveal the overall sound quality measures. The EcoSonic Project seeks to determine whether a toolkit can be developed to assist scientists in gauging environmental transformation due to climate change and land use though acoustic ecology. We hypothesize that these tools may indicate the overall impact on environmental health earlier than traditional ecological metrics would allow. The poster bellow indicates that machine learning was used to create a tool that was effective at predicting future environmental impact based on a previous body of environmental sound recordings. This indicates very positive potential to refine our work to produce a tool to monitor and predict climate impact from sounds alone, thereby substantially reducing the human hours involved in current monitoring and producing a more reliable outcome.
The EcoSonics project has been presented at conferences and in journal articles including
- Paine, G. (2016). Ecologies of Listening and Presence: Perspectives from a Practitioner. Contemporary Music Review, 35(3), 362-371.
- Paine, G. (2017). Acoustic Ecology 2.0. Proceedings from Sound + Environment Conference, Hull, UK.
- This work was also featured on Arizona PBS, here
The following is a poster of initial outcomes presented at the all scientists meeting for the Long Term Environmental Monitoring project. For a larger version see here