Etat de Genève – State of Geneva

Département du territoire

Office cantonal de l’environnement

SABRA (Service de l’air, du bruit et des rayonnements non-ionisants)

About the Canton of Geneva:

• Geneva is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland.
• The canton of Geneva is itself composed of 45 municipalities (one of them is the city of Geneva).
• The canton of Geneva represents a total area of around 280 km2, with a total population of 500’000 inhabitants.

My responsabilities:

Management of a team of 7 scientists and technical specialists with the following missions:

• Enforce cantonal and federal (swiss) legislation on the territory of Geneva for the environmental protection of air quality as well as protection against noise, especially for urban planning projects
• Monitor the air pollution with a network of stationary measurement stations (link to our website)
• Prepare content for public communication about air quality, through various communication channels (website, social media, press, etc), and publication of an annual report on “Air quality” (link to our reports)
• Trigger pollution alerts in case legal thresholds are exceeded and to set-up emergency and enforceable actions to reduce pollution (link to our page explaining the Stick’Air plan)
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the long term actions and strategy taken by the State of Geneva to reduce air pollution
• Prepare strategic noise maps and to determine if sound proofing measures are needed
• Test new IOT technologies with the objective of deploying networks of low cost sensors in order to get real time and “where it is” determination of the pollution (air and noise)

Projects with federal funding:

• OFEV/DETEC – “Orbiwise smart metering – Solution autonome de mesure de la pollution sonore en milieu urbain” – Number REF-1011-05300 – Parnters: OrbiWise SA, SABRA (link to a video giving an overview of the project)
• Innosuisse – “Novel SI-traceable low-cost sensor system (LCSS) for air quality monitoring” – Number 36779.1 IP-ENG – Partners: METAS (Federal Office of Metrology), LNI Swiss Gas SA, SABRA
• Innosuisse – “sMart Edge fabric for Iot Applications: MEDInA” – Number 30235.1 IP-ICT – Partners: Hepia (Haute école du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Genève), SixSq Sarl, Smart Geneva, SIG (Service industriels de Genève), SABRA
• Innosuisse – “NORA: Noise Radar – Distributed Acoustic Sensor Network for Traffic Noise Impact Measurement” – Number 43941.1 IP-ICT – Partners: EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), Hepia (Haute école du paysage, d’ingénierie et d’architecture de Genève), Securaxis SA, SABRA

Publications:

• Internoise – 2019 June 16-19– Madrid – Spain – “Real time 3D environmental noise monitoring and mapping using large-scale internet of things” Didier Helal, Samuel Dubouloz, Jorgen Mortensen, Paolo Baldi, Paul Royo (Download the proceeding here)
• SIDO IoT AI Robotics – 2019 April 10-11 – Lyon – France – “Tech for Good: La ville intelligente au service du bien-être des citoyens” Invited speaker
• Webinar – 2021 December 8 – “Webinar : A Revolutionary Way To Measure Noise And Take Corrective Measures For Your City And Enterprise” Theo Benjert, Didier Helal, Paul Royo, Samlall Bisram (link to the webinar)