Estimation of vibration exposure in residential environments

The University of Salford has derived an exposure-response relationship for vibration in residential environments. Vibration measurements have been used for assessing the human exposure alongside a social study questionnaire based on face-to-face interviews for quantifying the human response. This paper deals with the exposure side of the study. In order to cover the wide range of exposures affecting the living environment, various types of vibration activity have been measured, namely: railway, construction and domestic activity. Different and novel measurement approaches have been adopted for assessing the internal vibration exposure in almost 1,000 dwellings. This paper describes the methodologies used for deriving the est imate of the exposure for each vibration source considered and also provides some results. [Work funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) UK