Just before the summer holidays we organized a calibration day with a large number of volunteers to find out to what extent the measurements with the free Explane app correspond to the real noise level. On average, Explane appears to deviate only 2 dB from a calibrated dB meter.
Explane.org and SchipholWatch are very happy with these results, especially since the measurements with Explane now appear to be more reliable than the calculations by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Water Management and those of Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
‘6 dB is within expected margins’
As a reminder: the measurements of a test flight mid-last year (‘experience flight’) were sometimes as much as 6 dB higher than the previously calculated values. The minister, Cora van Nieuwenhuizen, called this deviation “well within the expected margins”.
With the 2 dB deviation, Explane is therefore completely within the margins applied by the ministry and can from now on be seen as a more reliable source of information on flight noise than the sector’s calculations.
Tens of thousands registrations
The average deviation is calculated on the basis of several hundred individual measurements, compared to official measurements by the Dutch Noise Abatement Society (NSG, Nederlandse Stichting Geluidshinder).
Statistically it can be expected that the average deviation for the tens of thousands of measurements on the site https://reports.explane.org is even smaller than the currently determined 2 decibels.