Researcher of UNPHU participates in the V International Congress of the Dominican Physical Society

Dr. Julio Moisés Álvarez, professor and researcher at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU), participated in the V International Congress of the Dominican Physical Society (Ci-SoDoFi), in which he gave the talk: “Citizen Science: Noise Map of the Colonial City”, under the theme of educational physics. The presentation corresponds to a research project carried out by the professor.

In his presentation, the researcher explained how noise pollution in Greater Santo Domingo reached more than 90,000 complaints for loud music, vehicle, and construction noise in 2022. Professor Álvarez, together with student and research assistant Rubén Mesa, commented that noise is any undesirable sound that, depending on its nature, magnitude, or duration, can affect health and/or produce other adverse effects for people and the environment.

In this regards, he expressed that “with the creation of the Noise Observatory of the Colonial City, we seek to raise awareness among students and the general public about the problem of noise in our country, how to measure it and the impact it has on the health of people, as well as allow them to start in scientific activity as active participants together with professional researchers. The results will allow us to see which are the most important points in the area and take the correspondent measurements”.

Through citizen science, the first noise map of the country will be made in the Colonial City (Street Noise Map, El Conde, Colonial City, October 20, 2023), which will have the participation in principle of the students of UNPHU of different careers, in addition to the owners and residents of this area; and the measurement will be made by means of an application in smart phones. Participants will receive training in the use of this application; then, the data will be exported to a database and analyzed to later create the noise map.

The project is sponsored by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology (MESCyT), through FONDOCYT, the Architecture, Urban Planning and Environment Laboratory of the School of Architecture, and the Department of Physics of UNPHU, with the collaboration of the Dominican Republic Academy of Sciences (ACRD) and the Association of Owners and Residents of the Colonial City (APRECC).

The V Ci-SoDoFi was held from January 15 to 17, 2024; in the halls of Catalonia Bávaro Beach, Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. In this edition the topics covered were earth sciences, educational physics, mathematical physics, statistical and thermodynamic physics, energy, and medical physics.

Citizen Science

Citizen science is a way to engage the community in the process of scientific research; citizens collaborate with scientists and contribute data and observations for the advancement of knowledge in a wide variety of fields, such as ecology, astronomy, biology, and meteorology. Likewise, citizen science projects can include the collection of data using accessible tools and technologies, such as sensors and cameras, and the analysis of this data can be carried out by citizens and scientists together.

Map of Noise

There are several concepts, but the one established by the European Parliament is the following: “Map designed to be able to assess the overall exposure to noise in a given area, due to the existence of different noise sources, or to be able to make global predictions for that area.”

About Professor and Researcher Dr. Julio Moisés Álvarez

Interuniversity Doctor in Logic and Philosophy of Science (99/2011). Coordinator of the Commission of Basic Sciences and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic and research professor of Physics at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.