Effects of Railway-induced Noise and Vibration on Sleep Disturbance in Detached Houses

Abstract

Railway-induced noise and vibrations cause adverse effects on the daily life of people living in detached houses, especially in Japanese urban districts. Our previous studies revealed that annoyance due to each of noise and vibrations differed according to railway category: high-speed Shinkansen railway and conventional railway. In addition, we quantified the respective impact of noise and vibration exposures on individual annoyances by the above railway categories. Following these studies, we tried to clarify the effects of noise and vibrations on subjective sleep disturbance of people living in detached houses. Datasets used for the analysis were common with the previous studies. Applying the multiple-logistic regression analysis to the individual data, we estimated respective effects of noise and vibration exposures on sleep disturbance. Night sound pressure level and maximum vibration level in the vertical direction were used as noise and vibration exposures, respectively. In either railway category, sleep disturbance was affected not only by noise exposure but also by vibration exposure. In addition, we clarified that noise exposure has a larger effect on sleep disturbance than vibration exposure for conventional railways; in contrast, for Shinkansen railways, vibration exposure more affected sleep disturbance than noise exposure.