A new procedure to carry out noise and vibration measurements oriented to support an annoyance evaluation in the framework of the Life SNEAK project

Abstract

The LIFE SNEAK project, started in September 2021, aims at the reduction of noise from road traffic that mainly affects densely populated urban areas where the noise and vibrations produced by the tram overlap with noise produced by road traffic. Applicative measures will be designed and tested in a pilot case of the city of Florence, such as low-noise and vibration surfaces, with life cycle costs comparable to those of traditional surfaces, and measures to reduce tram noise aiming to obtain substantial reductions in noise and annoyance. In the first phase, specific attention was dedicated to the state-of-the-art analysis concerning prediction and monitoring of the level of noise and ground-borne vibrations in urban environments. Moreover, the impacts of road traffic and tramway in terms of noise and vibrations on people annoyance in urban context have been investigated in order to design appropriate questionnaires for citizens. In fact, the exploration of any combined effect of vibration and noise on annoyance is also suggested by recent guidelines for designing dedicated social surveys. In this paper the procedure to design a noise and vibration measurements campaign oriented to support an evaluation of effective reductions in terms of both levels and annoyance is presented.