Compensation cost estimation model for construction noise claims using case-based reasoning

Noise due to construction is recognized as a crucial source of harm to the surroundings of a site. A number of noise-related problems can cause significant risk to an ongoing project. As a first step toward coping with noise, this paper presents a model developed for estimating the noise-related compensation cost through case-based reasoning (CBR). An experiment was performed with 20 randomly selected test cases. The compensation costs were estimated based on damage days and excessive noise level of similar cases. A Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) was adopted to deal with limited and uncertain data. The results showed that the cases had a similarity of 91.8% on average, and the mean absolute error ratio (MAER) of the estimated cost based on data revised by MCS was approximately 11.8%. This indicates that the estimated and actual costs were similar, which validates the applicability of the model. This research contributes to the field of construction noise management by providing environmental managers with a systematic approach for estimating noise-related compensation during the preconstruction phase.