Data Speaks: Understanding New York City's Noise Landscape. Apodcast




So, I'm sure you've heard of Google's Notebook LM. If you haven't, go listen to this podcast first, then come back. Seriously, I'll wait.



Alright, now that you're back, let me give you a brief background on why and how this  started. For months, my teammates Andrea Lacche ,  Pradeep, and I have been working on analyzing New York City's noise landscape as part of a class project. The goal was to analyze noise complaints across New York City to better understand the urban noise landscape. We wanted to identify key hotspots and trends, ultimately providing insights into how noise pollution affects different neighborhoods and what measures might be effective in addressing these issues. We uncovered some pretty interesting insights, such as the Bronx having the highest number of noise complaints, particularly related to loud music, and identifying significant spikes in complaints during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you're curious about those and deeper insights, feel free to reach out to any of us—we'd be happy to share the data, graphs, and findings. 


But that's not what this article is about. This is about the podcast we created using those very findings.


We all know AI is here, and it's doing amazing things—from generating Picasso-style images of your cat to helping you write that email to your boss in a "friendlier" tone. 


Recently, Google made a splash in the podcast space by unveiling a new feature in their Notebook LM.  I briefly talked about NotebookLM  four months ago, right around the time it had just lauched,  in this LinkedIn post, https://www.linkedin.com/posts/olimiemma_sign-in-google-accounts-activity-7216881645717512192-sghK/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android. 


This new feature allowed users to effortlessly turn written content into podcasts, making it a game-changer for content creators and listeners alike. It took the internet by storm when it lauched and since then people have been using it to create all sorts of podcasts: Podcasts of their resumes and LinkedIn bios, their  journal entries and even some bold ones are creating podcasts of their group chats to listen to and catch up on what they missed over the weekend, while they do their Monday commute to work . Pretty genius if you ask me, risky, but genius either way. 


Inspired by this, Yesterday I decided to take our class project materials—the PowerPoint presentation and the one-pager summary that our professor, Cristina (HyunJin) Jeong , required—and feed them into Notebook LM. The results were nothing short of Astounding. I was able to create a podcast that highlighted things like the key noise pollution trends in NYC, including the hotspots, the main types of complaints, and the timeline of complaint spikes. All  from just a few graphs and texts, and the explanations and further insights in the podcast were something else all together


This made the data come alive in a way that  charts and graphs couldn't express. Its mind simply blowing.


I have played with NotebookLM  before using simple texts and articles as source data, but never with graphs and visual or image data. I didnt know what to expect but I was more than impressed. Just goes to show the power of AI, whats its capable of and what the future of creation looks like. Not to mention all the different ways and mediums of presenting what you create that are now available.  Esp in the fields of data analytics.  Because now, with a simple click of button, I can give you what you want to know as a text, as a graphic, or as an audio. Take your pick.  Plus we all know video is coming pretty soon as well, we are rooting for you Pika  :)


By the way Big shoutout to the team at Google,  Raiza Martin and Jason Spielman , for making the user experience minimal. It requires few steps to get to your goal and is so easy to use, and I feel like that needs to be acknowledged,especially for something as complex as this. 


But I won't say more—I'll just let you listen for yourself.


And please go play with it, create, mess around, You will be suprised by what use case this might have in your life.








#NYCNoise #UrbanAnalytics #DataDrivenStorytelling #PodcastCreation #AIinContentCreation #GoogleNotebookLM #NoisePollution #UrbanEnvironment #DataVisualization #AcousticConsulting #MachineLearning #CityInsights #SmartCities #UrbanSolutions #Teamwork #AI #Innovation #ContentMarketing #UrbanPlanning #DigitalTransformation #AIForGood #Storytelling #BigData #TechTrends #Podcasting #GoogleAI #DataScience #CityLife #FutureOfCities #CreativeAI

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