On the assessment of the human exposure from vibration caused by railway construction

When constructing large infrastructure, such as railways, close to living environments it is important to know how residents respond to construction vibration. In this framework, the University of Salford, within the project “Human response to vibration in residential environments”, has provided, for the first time, an exposure-response relationship for vibration caused by railway construction in the living environment based on 350 case studies. The evaluation of the response was conducted with a face to face questionnaire whereas the exposure was measured through vibration measurement. This paper deals with the exposure side of the problem describing the novel approach developed for the assessment of human exposure. Considering the construction processes as a linear sequence of operations that move along a predefined route as the work progresses, the methodology relies on combined long term and array measurements for evaluating the exposure propagation through the residential environment based on semi empirical relationship well known in the construction field. Results are presented for two construction processes. [Work funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) UK