SOUNDSCALE is an ambitious research project aimed at transforming urban planning in smart cities through the innovative use of Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) technologies, leveraing legacy optical fibre cables that lie unused underground or undersea. DAS is currently used to sense vibration/sounds in its surroundings to detect events like earthquakes or monitor oil rigs. Recently, it has been proposed as a cheap and effective alternative to other monitoring systems in urban environments, such as to monitor traffic, crowds, buildings' integrity, and transportation networks in general, which could influence how cities are planned in the future. However, there are important concerns around how this technology develops such as data privacy, AI ethics, equitable technology access, sustainability, climate impact, inequality, and citizen participation in decision-making processes. In an age where technological advancements rapidly alter the urban landscape, there is a growing disconnect between citizens, policymakers and these transformative changes. The vision of SOUNDSCALE is to enable cities to become truly 'smart' by integrating citizens directly into the development and implementation of emerging technologies, so that they can prioritise and anticipate issues before it is too late to change the direction of research and development. This approach not only aims to mitigate potential ethical, privacy, and accessibility issues but also to ensure that technology deployment is sustainable, inclusive, and beneficial to all segments of society. To realise this vision, SOUNDSCALE adopts an interdisciplinary research strategy, integrating insights from the physical sciences, political science, human geography, humanities, environmental sciences, arts-based research, computer science and public health, intertwined with an ambitious knowledge exchange and engagement strategy. The project will be divided into three phases. In Phase 1, a diverse citizen panel from London and Southampton will be convened to identify research priorities based on learning about the technology's opportunities and risks. These cities have an extensive optical fibre network connected through the National Dark Fibre Facility (NDFF), which will be used to obtain preliminary measurements of 'the sound of the cites'. Phase 2 involves interdisciplinary workshops to translate these priorities into actionable research areas, fostering innovative methodologies and novel interdisciplinary knowledge. Phase 3 focuses on synthesising findings for impact with policymakers and the public, ensuring that the research benefits are tangible and aligned with societal needs. SOUNDSCALE emphasises the importance of co-creation with non-academics, including practitioners, activists, artists, policymakers, and citizens. This collaborative philosophy is designed to produce research that is not only academically rigorous but also socially relevant and responsive to the needs and concerns of the wider community. Through this process, SOUNDSCALE seeks to create interdisciplinary research projects involving researchers from different disciplines to tackle problems like: disentangling urban background noise from dynamic events, exploring the link between noise exposure and public health across sections of society, developing ethical frameworks for DAS deployment or examining how DAS can redefine urban spaces and influence social inequalities and surveillance. Our knowledge exchange and engagement strategy is innovative, featuring a citizen panel, policy activities, artistic exhibitions, an art- and activism-led grant program, and a sustained digital and local presence. By partnering with a wide range of stakeholders, including universities, research centres, art galleries, industry partners, and city councils, SOUNDSCALE aims to ensure that its findings and technologies are widely disseminated and adopted, leading to more inclusive, equitable, and smart urban development.

The properties of light are already exploited in communications, the Internet of Things, big data, manufacturing, biomedical applications, sensing and imaging, and are behind many of the inventions that we take for granted today. Nevertheless, there is still a plethora of emerging applications with the potential to effect positive transformations to our future societies and economies. UK researchers develop cutting-edge technologies that will make these applications a reality. The characteristics of these technologies already surpass the operating wavelength range and electronic bandwidth of our existing measurement equipment (as well as other facilities in the UK), which currently forms a stumbling block to demonstrating capability, and eventually generating impact. Several important developments, relating for example, to integrated photonic technologies capable of operating at extremely high speeds or the invention of new types of optical fibres and amplifiers that are capable of breaking the traditional constraints of conventional silica glass technology, necessitate the use of ever more sophisticated equipment to evaluate the full extent of their capabilities. This project aims at establishing an open experimental facility for the UK research community that will enable its users to experiment over a wide range of wavelengths, and generate, detect and analyse signals at unprecedented speeds. The new facility will enable the characterisation of signals in time and will offer a detailed analysis of their frequency components. Coherent detection will be possible, thereby offering information on both the amplitude and phase characteristics of the signals. This unique capability will enable its users to devise and execute a range of novel experiments. For example, it will be possible to experiment using signals, such as those that will be adopted in the communication networks of the future. It will make it possible to reveal the characteristics of novel devices and components to an extent that has previously not been possible. It will also be possible to analyse the response of experimental systems in unprecedented detail. The facility will benefit from being situated at the University of Southampton, which has established strong experimental capabilities in areas, such as photonics, communications and the life sciences. Research at the extended cleanroom complex of Southampton's Zepler Institute, a unique facility in UK academia, will benefit from the availability of this facility, which will enable fabrication and advanced applications research to be intimately connected. Furthermore, this new facility will be attached to EPSRC's National Dark Fibre Facility - this is the UK National Research Facility for fibre network research, offering access and control over the optical layer of a dedicated communications network for research-only purposes. The two together will create an experimental environment for communications research that is unique internationally.