Framework definition to assess airport noise and aircraft emissions of pollutant based on mathematical models

During the last ten years, in Civil Aviation sector there have been several initiatives for the development of policies to mitigate the environmental impacts. From ICAO to the single national authorities, like ENAC in Italy, it has been noted a strong increase in studies related to the specific environmental aspects concerning Aviation activities. The last three years have seen a stable 3% sector annual growth trend . Financial crisis, started in 2007, has not changed the estimation of traffic doubling volume for 2020. It is clear that this air traffic increase will request the upgrading of the airport infrastructures. It is very important that sustainable objectives of economic growth will be set in order to protect environment both on local scale, for communities living near airports, and on global scale, for the limitation of Greenhouse gases. In Italy the main aspect has always been noise pollution because the majority of airports are within densely populated areas. In Europe after the introduction of specific Directives, emission of pollutants in the atmosphere has seen an increase in perception not only for the development of mitigation projects like CleanSky, but also for the adoption of ETS for the Commercial Aviation sector. However, it does not exist yet a common set of rules around the world. This potentially can create some conflicting situations due to the interdependence between noise and emissions of pollutant . It is necessary to focus on all the environmental aspects to integrate the mitigation policies and operational procedures. The best choice will be made also taking into account capacity and safety issues in order to increase the effectiveness of the interventions. This thesis presents a method for the determination of two environmental indexes, the first regarding noise and the second atmospheric emissions produced by flight operations. The study case is the Italian airport system in the period 1999-2008. The indexes have been validated with mathematical models at the three major Lombardy airports. In this way, an “environmental tool” for airport impact analysis, both for actual conditions and future developments, has been created in order to simplify the assessment without using models or measures. As a descriptor of the airport noise, we opted for an index similar to the Day Night Level, DNL, which is based on the single event noise, weighed accordingly on whether it takes place in day-time or night-time. The name of the index is LVAyear. As for the impact on air quality, it was decided to assign a monetary cost to emissions to estimate the air traffic externalities in relation to the pollutants considered in this study (HC, NOx, CO, PM and SO2). The designed descriptor is called LAP (Local Air Pollution) index. Scenario simulations were done with mathematical models INM to calculate noise levels and EDMS to quantify emissions of contaminants. As for the structure of the work, chapter 1 and 2 introduce the general aspects concerning noise and gas emissions as well as mathematical models. The procedure for indexes definition is contained in chapter 3 while scenario analysis is described in chapter 4. Results are discussed in chapter 5.