"Mathematician Asks, HowLoud?"

By SUZ CARNEY (Open Post)

Few people can solve a problem the way Brendan Farrell, a 36-year old Mathematician solved his grievance with noise.

Before signing the lease on an apartment just above a busy street, he didn’t quite realize the invasive and limiting effect street noise would have on his daily existence.

He quickly found that the traffic-noise from below preempted his ability to enjoy the balcony for which he had paid. When it came to buying his first house, rather than take a chance, he did what any PhD mathematician would do.

He searched for data that could confirm exactly what level of noise he was getting into, and he was shocked to find that no such information was available.

Cities commission noise studies, but they are not generally available. “Imagine if City Hall kept the weather report a secret?,” Farrell said.

While it seems absurd to think that this would ever be the case, it begs the next question about measuring one’s environmental noise level, and the ability to do so— Why not?

Although this information should be easily accessible to anyone making a decision about where to live, and whether to invest, it wasn’t.

The difference is that Farrell knew how to create a solution, and the process he started has become HowLoud.

HowLoud’s map currently covers Los Angeles and Orange County.

But Farrell has no intention of stopping there. Now that he’s got the project running, he plans to expand across North America, showing both the pandemonium and the peace, and eventually bringing the idea to a global end.