Former Caltech researcher confirms: Just how loud is your hood?

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This above blotchy rash spreading across Los Angeles represents Yelp reviews that mention the word "hipster." Imagine if noise in L.A. (or across the country) could be seen by heat map too.

The campaign is called HowLoud, and they want to give every location in Southern California a score based on the sound profile of the location.

That means taking into account multiple factors, from intensity and volume to frequency and duration. With a databank of scores, HowLoud then makes a heatmap of noise across the region. Currently the campaign is focused on Los Angeles and Orange County, but the project hopes to map across the country.

Would you factor sound into considerations of real estate and commercial property purchases? How important is sound to you when exploring a neighborhood? What potential is there for such data to become widely used across the country?

Guest:

Brendan Farrell, former researcher at Caltech and founder of the Kickstarter campaign HowLoud