Vibrations in buildings impact the behaviour of structures and humans, for sources
defined as internal or external to the building. Besides the comparison of vibrations to
fixed limits, the choice of a relevant indicator is unavoidable and this indicator is
defined differently according to the selected reference text. Various standards (or
directives similar to standards) exist and this paper focuses on the most important and
the most used ones, for ground vibrations induced to buildings or for human exposure
inside buildings. In addition to the interest of comparing values to well-defined and
well-known limits, the knowledge of these standards allows the use of suitable indicators.
Various vibration signals are used, from a simple harmonic signal to complex vibrations
generated by railway traffic, in order to present a relevant analysis of severity of each
norm. It turns out that criteria noticeably vary from one reference to another one, and
that the thresholds are different for each standard.