Exposure-response relationships from railway noise in the presence of vibration

The main aim of this thesis is to develop exposure-response relationships for noise,vibration, and combined effects from noise and vibration. Examinations of nonacousticalfactors such as noise sensitivity, noise acceptance, gender, age, and sleepdisturbance are also performed in this project. Many studies have previously beenconducted to investigate community response to transportation noise in residentialareas. Comparatively few studies have investigated community response to vibrationexposure, and fewer still the combined effects of noise and vibration. This study ofexposure-response relationships for noise and vibration therefore presents a potentiallysignificant need contribution for the problems of these kinds.This work was performed as part of the Defra funded project "NANR209: Humanresponse to vibration in residential environments" which was conducted between January2008 and March 2011. The database for the project was obtained by undertaking asocial survey questionnaire along with measurements of vibration. The projectaddressed railway, construction and internal sources of vibration. This thesis concernsrailway exposure for which the database contains 931 cases. The face to face interviewstook place within participants' dwellings. In 542 properties out of 931, internal vibrationwas recorded and calculated utilizing a number of vibration indices, two of which areVDVb,24h and RMS Wk. Vibration exposure has been predicted for the remaining cases.Noise exposure in the form of Lden has been calculated for 843 out of 931 cases using theCalculation of Railway Noise procedure (Department of Transport, 1995). It has beenestimated that maximal error that can be expected from prediction in this thesis is equalto ±10 dB(A) at the 95% confidence level. On the other hand, maximal error that can beexpected from vibration measurements is equal to ±2.2 dB or ±6.2 dB, with regard to"internal measurements" and "no measurements", respectively.It is concluded from analyses of combined effects that noise and vibration additivelycontribute to the proportion of people reporting little, moderate, and high annoyancefrom exposure to railway noise in the presence of vibration.[Work funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) UK