Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities

Community opposition to the noise concentration from precise NextGen Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) aircraft arrival and departure procedures poses a significant threat to the future of these procedures in the U.S. National Airspace System. A substantial number of complaints concerning airport n...

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Main Authors: Brenner, Morrisa A., Hansman, R. John
Format: Technical Report
Language:en_US
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110791
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author Brenner, Morrisa A.
Hansman, R. John
author_facet Brenner, Morrisa A.
Hansman, R. John
author_sort Brenner, Morrisa A.
collection MIT
description Community opposition to the noise concentration from precise NextGen Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) aircraft arrival and departure procedures poses a significant threat to the future of these procedures in the U.S. National Airspace System. A substantial number of complaints concerning airport noise come from locations outside the 65dB Day-Night Level (DNL) contour considered the significant noise exposure threshold in U.S. federal regulation. This indicates that this threshold does not sufficiently capture areas that experience annoyance related to more concentrated, lower level overflight noise at distances farther from the airport. This thesis assesses the effectiveness by which different noise analysis methods capture the locations of these airport noise complaints through examination of the noise exposure for three representative scenarios at Boston Logan International Airport using DNL and number of overflights above a noise threshold (Nabove) metrics. The three scenarios examined include the standard noise analysis methodology scenario (annual average day) as well as a day of heavy usage of a noise-sensitive runway (33L for departures), and a scenario representing a peak hour of departures on this runway. The results indicate that the 33L peak day scenario does a better job of capturing a substantial fraction of the complainants sensitive to the 33L departure trajectories (66%-87% at the 45dB-50dB DNL thresholds) than the standard annual average day scenario. Results for the 33L peak day scenario indicate that the Nabove metric is also effective at capturing noise complaints at the 60dB day/50dB night noise threshold at exposure rates in the 25-50 overflight range (78%-84% complainant capture).
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spelling mit-1721.1/1107912019-04-10T15:57:31Z Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities Brenner, Morrisa A. Hansman, R. John aviation noise aircraft noise air transportation DNL Community opposition to the noise concentration from precise NextGen Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) aircraft arrival and departure procedures poses a significant threat to the future of these procedures in the U.S. National Airspace System. A substantial number of complaints concerning airport noise come from locations outside the 65dB Day-Night Level (DNL) contour considered the significant noise exposure threshold in U.S. federal regulation. This indicates that this threshold does not sufficiently capture areas that experience annoyance related to more concentrated, lower level overflight noise at distances farther from the airport. This thesis assesses the effectiveness by which different noise analysis methods capture the locations of these airport noise complaints through examination of the noise exposure for three representative scenarios at Boston Logan International Airport using DNL and number of overflights above a noise threshold (Nabove) metrics. The three scenarios examined include the standard noise analysis methodology scenario (annual average day) as well as a day of heavy usage of a noise-sensitive runway (33L for departures), and a scenario representing a peak hour of departures on this runway. The results indicate that the 33L peak day scenario does a better job of capturing a substantial fraction of the complainants sensitive to the 33L departure trajectories (66%-87% at the 45dB-50dB DNL thresholds) than the standard annual average day scenario. Results for the 33L peak day scenario indicate that the Nabove metric is also effective at capturing noise complaints at the 60dB day/50dB night noise threshold at exposure rates in the 25-50 overflight range (78%-84% complainant capture). This work was sponsored by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under ASCENT Center of Excellence Project 23, Cooperative Agreement 13-C-AJFE-MIT-008. 2017-07-20T17:05:20Z 2017-07-20T17:05:20Z 2017-07-20 Technical Report http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110791 en_US ICAT;2017-05 application/pdf
spellingShingle aviation noise
aircraft noise
air transportation
DNL
Brenner, Morrisa A.
Hansman, R. John
Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title_full Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title_fullStr Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title_full_unstemmed Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title_short Comparison of Methods for Evaluating Impacts of Aviation Noise on Communities
title_sort comparison of methods for evaluating impacts of aviation noise on communities
topic aviation noise
aircraft noise
air transportation
DNL
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/110791
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