Recorded Sound Repository Military Edition A New Tool for Researchers Tanisha Hammill (HCE) Odile Clavier (Creare) Matt Ueckermann (Creare) MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 1
DISCLAIMER The views expressed in this presentation are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense, or the U. S. Government. MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 2
Motivation The DoD s Collaborative Auditory & Vestibular Research Network (CAVRN) noticed that researchers were either duplicating efforts or remaining consistently under-resourced to produce research-quality sound recordings for each new study. MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 3
Objective Create an online repository where researchers in the community can store, analyze, and retrieve sounds recorded in military environments. MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 4
HCE by CONGRESSIONAL MANDATE Public Law 110-417 Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2009, Section 721: Secretary of Defense shall establish, within the DoD, centers of excellence (CoE) to include a CoE focused on the prevention, diagnosis, mitigation, treatment and rehabilitation of hearing loss and auditory system injury The Secretary shall ensure that the center:» Collaborates to the maximum extent practicable with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, institutions of higher education, and other appropriate public and private entities (including international entities)» Collaboratively develops a registry with bi-directional data exchange to identify and track incidence and care for hearing loss and auditory injury» Utilize registry data to encourage and facilitate the conduct of research, development of best practices, and clinical education 5 MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 5
Background MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 6
Why Military-Specific? Military sounds are difficult to access Where can you record a humvee idling, riding on pavement and also on a dirt road? Who s going to let you in? Do you have operational approval to use the recordings? Do you have the right equipment to record impulse noises? DoD is paying $$$ for companies like Creare and research institutions to make recordings Repository gets more out of the investment Enable research that can be replicated MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 7
Military Noise Military operations are inherently noisy Ability to hear and communicate is critical for mission performance Most hearing loss can be mitigated Hearing disability costs are huge 13 Feb 2013 8 MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 8
Target Audience Audiologists who need relevant examples for patients and clients Users who want to compare sounds Individuals with military sound recordings who don t have the ability to easily analyze the sounds Researchers who want to use relevant sounds for their experiments Researchers and audiologists who want to share their recordings MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 9
Other Sound Repositories www.freesound.org NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation Program Noise Measurement Database MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 10
Upload, rate, edit View Download View Download Repository Design Open-access to obtain recordings Controlled access to upload and contribute Logged-in user Public MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 11
Features Basic analysis of sounds in repository Noise levels (L eq ) First and third octave bands Sound level distribution Faceted Search Taxonomies and categorization Sorting Filtering Keyword search Sound Previews MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 12
Quality Assurance Contributions Restricted to Vetted Users Each upload is tied to specific contributor profile Sound quality linked to contributor's reputation Rating System Sounds can be rated by other logged-in users Calibration Filter sounds by calibration Un-calibrated sound uploads are allowed, but flagged Comparison feature Can compare basic properties of upload to another sound MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 13
Let s tour the site MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 14
Finding Sounds MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 15
Sound Details MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 16
Browsing Events MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 17
Contributing/Uploading Sounds MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 18
Creating Events MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 19
What s Next? Creare to upload recordings from prior study related to hearing fitness for duty Background noises from several training exercises from Fort Polk, Fort Irwin Some speech corpora from publicly available speech-in-noise tests Site to be linked from HCE website Public release in the next month http://noise.crearecomputing.com/ MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 20
Summary In response to the needs of our CAVRN community, the HCE will provide this Web-based repository and interface to: Store noise and sound recordings Provide easy access by other researchers Allow researchers to commit new recordings to the database Ensure specific requirements for each recording are met» Calibration for each recording» Supply specific, reportable information about recording circumstances MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 21
Summary Access to this database will be open source Permissions for uploading can be sought through the HCE Please visit hearing.health.mil for more information about the Noise Repository and greater HCE mission Thank you for your time Questions? MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 22
Acknowledgements The Hearing Center of Excellence Picked up the concept and funded it The many active duty members of the military who agreed to let us record during their training exercises freesound.org Jed Wilbur and Veronique Archambault-Leger (Creare engineers who also contributed) MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 23
Questions? http://www.hearing.health.mil http://noise.crearecomputing.com/ MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 24
Taxonomy Initial category listing inspired by A Dataset and Taxonomy for Urban Sound Research Justin Salamon 1,2, Christopher Jacoby 1, Juan Pablo Bello 1 Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM, 2014. 1 Music and Audio Research Laboratory, New York University 2 Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University We welcome suggestions and input MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 25
Backup MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 26
Website Technology Website User requests page Serves page Django Build page from template Retrieve content PostgreSQL MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 27
Add content update content Website Technology Website User uploads sound Django PostgreSQL Python/Essentia MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 28
Learning Objectives Learning Objective #1: Attendees will learn how the Sounds Repository can be accessed, utilized, and contributed to. Learning Objective #2: Attendees will learn the overall mission and scope of the Defense Department's Hearing Center of Excellence (HCE). Learning Objective #3: Attendees will understand the quality and assurances of the recordings contained within the repository. MTG-15-02-5165 / 7114 / 29