Noise generated from large construction sites: Measurements and possible mitigations

In this study, the issue of noise arising from the activities of large construction sites is analysed. The problem is particularly significant when the sites are close to protected natural areas or to residential areas and also when the duration of the construction works is very large. The case of the construction of a mobile barrier system, known as the MoSE, for the safeguard of the city of Venice from intruding tidal waters, is here reported. Since the early beginning of the construction activities, in April 2005, noise emission monitoring was conducted in order to evaluate possible effects on the presence of bird communities in the surrounding areas and also to evaluate the noise disturbance in some of the residential buildings close to the sites. During the monitoring activity, it was possible to measure the noise levels, the noise spectra and spectrograms in real-time and occasionally even the audio signal for particular activities was recorded. The analysis of data collected in different periods defined the pile driving and some other activities as the most significant from the standpoint of noise emission, therefore the possibility to mitigate their emission was investigated.