Today, at the 100th birthday of KLM, one of Europe’s most polluting airliners per capita, we have passed the 100,000th registration with our app Explane.
Reaching this milestone the app is a huge success for enabling residents to register and document aviation noise. With the data, people can research the noise nuisance in their neighborhoods.
Use in democratic process
We have already seen the first documents from the Explane-website sent into the democratic process. Some residents have researched their situation and published their results in local and regional media and pointed politicians at the situation.
That’s one of the reasons why we have built the app. It’s the only way available until know for citizens to illustrate the severeness of their situation. Although not perfect, the numbers from Explane are convincing.
In the past half year we have calibrated a huge number of measurements and we concluded that on average registrations deviate only 2 dB from actual numbers, measured with a professional dB-meter.
Further research
Also we have made the raw data available for a university of technology in The Netherlands and a Dutch institute for public health. Those institutes are looking at the Explane data to determine if they can use it for further research.
Use of the app has really taken off in The Netherlands, with over 80K registrations, but also users in the United Kingdom are getting more actively involved in gathering data (> 10K). Recently we monitored the beginning of user growth in the United States of America.
From our headquarters in Amsterdam we wish to thank and congratulate all users of the app Explane and its corresponding website. Thanks for measuring and good luck with using the results!