A Novel Platform Design for Aircraft Noise Impact Assessment

Mitigation of aircraft noise pollution is a core goal of managing environmental interactions and inherently aligns with the aim of reducing aviation emissions. As noise pollution adversely affects the operation and expansion of airports by restricting land zoning and flight patterns, developing precise noise generation and propagation models is imperative. Efforts to minimize the impact of aircraft noise are influenced by the accurate mapping of the geometric distribution of that noise. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) utilizes the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT) to model aircraft noise, emissions, and air quality consequences for regulatory compliance and system planning. Aircraft operations and fleet mix data are required when users execute AEDT to compute the noise exposure level. However, such data are difficult to obtain from non-towered airports that lack full-time air traffic facilities and personnel. Several airport operations estimation approaches developed by researchers have shown limitations in accuracy and cost-efficiency of deployment when tested, limiting their usefulness with regards to noise modeling. Meanwhile, tracking aircraft through onboard transponder data was validated as a cost-effective approach to estimate aircraft operations at non-towered airports.The authors designed a platform consisting of three modules. Flight operations and aircraft performance parameters can be estimated in the first module by deploying inexpensive hardware to collect aircraft transponder signals. The second module estimates aircraft noise levels by integrating information sources with the noise vs. power vs. distance (NPD) data from the EUROCONTROL Aircraft Noise and Performance (ANP) database. The third module visualizes airport noise impact based on a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform. Additionally, a risk assessment and a sustainability analysis are presented in this paper.