Artificial neural network model for ground vibration amplitudes prediction due to light railway traffic in urban areas

The growth of density and circulation speed of railway transportation systems in urban areas increases the importance of the research issues of the produced environmental impacts. This study presents a field data analysis, obtained during monitoring campaigns of ground vibration, due to light railway traffic in urban areas, based on the artificial neural network (ANN) approach, using quantitative and qualitative predictors. Different ANN-based models, using those predictors, were evaluated/trained and validated. Using several criteria, including those that measures the possibility of ANN overfitting (RR 2 ) and complexity (AIC), the best ANN model was successfully obtained for Lisbon area. This model, with 16 input elements (quantitative and qualitative predictors), 2 neurons on the hidden layer with a hyperbolic tangent sigmoid transfer function, and 1 neuron on the output layer considering a linear transfer function, has 0.9720 for the coefficient of determination and 0.5293 for the sum squared error.