Vibration and noise criteria used to evaluate environmental impacts of transportation projects on sensitive facilities

Abstract

The paper examines the methodologies and evaluation criteria advocated by the U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and Federal Rail Administration (FRA) used to determine whether or not a proposed alignment for a transportation project adversely impacts affected land uses, such as research & development and high-technology manufacturing. The criteria in question are applied as limits on vibration and noise at sensitive receiver locations. Both short-term construction and long-term transportation operations are typically considered, with the latter being the focus of this paper. A case study is presented of a proposed transit system that passes through four different soil zones, the operational characteristics that are required to generate a vibration level equal to the FTA/FRA advocated level of 65 VdB re: 1 micro-inch/sec, and the range of variability of the acceptability of the vibration conditions when considered in terms of third-octave bands compared to vibration criterion (VC) curves that are used as the design performance targets of vibration-sensitive facilities.

Analysis of human footsteps utilizing multi-axial seismic fusion

“…Studies in the past have been successful in discriminating humans from other targets by analyzing the cadence of the target of interest [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. As an animal or human traverses an UGS field, its impulses are detected over time.…”