OLEKSANDER ZAPOROZHETS

Affiliation and official address:
Professor, Dr Sc       
Director of the Institute of Environmental Safety
Center of Environmental Problems of Airports
National Aviation University,
1, Ave. Cosmonaut Komarov, Kyiv, 03058, Ukraine

Aircraft noise is an important issue and exposure to aircraft noise, in particular, has an adverse effect on quality of life and public health (annoyance, sleep disturbance, communication interference, etc). It is the single or somewhere one of the most important local impact factor arising from airport operations which, unless managed effectively, has the potential to constrain the ability of airports to grow in response to demand and hence limit the social and economic benefits that future growth could bring. Aircraft noise continues to be a major constraint on airspace use despite aircraft technology improvements and a significant reduction in the number of people exposed to high aircraft noise levels. Noise continues to be a constraint on aviation growth. Main airports are already under constant pressure, trying to sustain current capacity levels and face strong resistance from the public regarding their expansion to meet expected traffic growth. Among others noise pollution also has an important impact on future extensions of airports which, in Europe particularly, are reaching their capacity limits and are often close to cities.

This is the reason for a number of current concept, approaches and efforts to reduce aviation noise annoyance, keeping the produced noise levels the same. Despite the implementation of noise-abating measures, first of all by implementing quite aircraft in operation, the number of people in EU exposed to noise levels above 55 dB (from aircraft traffic, which was increased) has increased little bit or even stable, but number of annoyed by this noise people living in vicinity of huge airports has increased unexpectedly dramatically (the more recent studies in airports of Manchester, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt). Exposure can lead to more than one effect, and community impacts depend on multiple effects. People are driven to complain when some nuisance factor (or stressor) in the environment gives rise to annoyance and when this stressor reaches a threshold of tolerance. This phenomenon is primarily due to increased traffic, partially due to increased settlement close to traffic routes, but more important – by poor involvement of the population to noise impact management. Crucial evidence that annoyance measured last decade in European airports is much higher dependent from the noise indices, the clear difference equivalent to around 5-6 dBA between the average trend of all of these more recent studies and the much older data, it means that high number of annoyed people observed in acoustic conditions which were considered not so serious decades before.

The protection of the residents is understood as a dynamic process, meaning that the evaluation criteria must be repeatedly tested and - if necessary - adapted to new scientific findings. The only significant determinant of perceived disturbance is the level of noise exposure. Comparing with traditional ICAO balanced approach elements, which are defined by physical effects of sound generation and propagation, annoyance is a psychological phenomenon (in nature of effect on humans the noise is a psychological phenomenon too!). To evaluate the effect of the protection measures implemented, a comprehensive set of surveys to evaluate the short- and long-term effects should be undertaken. A number of the previous studies indicate that when changes in noise exposure are achieved by source-related measures (quieter aircraft and/or low noise flight procedures implemented, air traffic reduced, etc.), the responses could be higher than those predicted from the exposure-response relationships established from a more stable condition. In studies where the changes include noise screens or insulation efforts, the change may be smaller than predicted. For example, inside dwellings of the “experimental” group that received the noise reduction intervention, an average equivalent noise reduction of 7 dBA was calculated inside the dwellings. But some of intervention studies show that people are often satisfied with an intervention regardless of the result of the intervention (Hawthorne effect). For example, one study show the positive effect equal to average equivalent noise reduction of 5 dBA from informing a population about simply a noise monitoring program realised carefully around the airport. A review of different theoretical approaches explaining such differences can be found elsewhere.

In best known solutions the process is continuing with public notification and consultation procedures and even being a mechanism for dispute resolution. The type of information collected and the way in which it is analyzed and reported will differ according to the objective of the program of noise control. This objective is expected to be achieved by bringing information closer to the people living in airport surroundings. It means customizing it to target meaningful and friendliness, in order to optimize the awareness-based mitigation strategies. For example, there is some previous assumption that shared unattended noise monitoring results can improve airport noise acceptance, as general public can check the compliance with noise limits in their proximity, raising people awareness. The generalized use of the Internet in recent years has allowed improving data accessibility by the general public, but: a) information reported is overly technical, and should be customized for different users’ profiles, so that they can understand the information provided; b) commonly used noise prediction indexes do not satisfy the general public’s expectations, as, on some occasions, they seem to mask the real pollution under mathematical operations. New studies should be implemented to test traditional and novel reporting templates aimed at improving awareness, comprehensibility, and properly matching noise scenarios to people’s perception. As a result of this work package, optimized reporting mechanisms will emerge.

The measurements of aircraft noise and the analysis of the results are necessary in order to protect correctly the local community living in the airport surrounding areas. Permanent or/and temporal noise monitoring to be undertaken usually in their local community on the assumption that aircraft noise will exceed what is considered ‘acceptable’ or legally permissible, and in this connection it is necessary to refer to the legislative controls on aircraft noise. In general case the purposes of monitoring are described elsewhere as: 1) to assess the current status of the resource to be managed or to help determine the priorities for management, 2) to determine if the desired management strategies were followed and produced the desired consequences, 3) to provide a greater understanding of the system being managed, and 4) to show that population involvement in noise management helped to reach the goals of the noise control program, etc. Although today in most cases the main concern is the negative impact of aircraft noise, the highest goal is to show that by measuring and monitoring the aircraft noise can be used for positive purposes. For example to show in routine mode what an aircraft exceeded the permissible level at a point of noise control, to show even why it exceeded (flight procedure mistake happened or an aircraft type is quite noisy to be operated in particular conditions), any safety issues may be raised with monitoring system usage and at the same moment The number and location of the monitors is important depending upon the specific role they are to play. Quite usual elements of current aircraft noise monitoring system are the air traffic data connection for flight events detection (correlation with noise events) and gathering the complaints from residents living around.