Airports' noise nuisance and emissions: estimation and validation through INM and EDSM simulation at Italian airports

This paper presents the development of two indexes for the evaluation of airports’ environmental externalities such as emissions (LAP) and noise nuisance (ANE) produced by the aircrafts. We verify their reliability through the comparison of the results with the outputs of models calculations at three Italian airports. The Integrated Noise Model (INM) has been used for the calculation of noise levels, while the Emissions and Dispersion Modeling System (EDMS) has been adopted for air pollutants. As for ANE, for each type of aircraft in the airport’s fleet-mix, noise levels are calculated with INM at the ICAO certification measurement points since the index is built upon certification data. Likewise LAP index comparison has been conducted running the emissions inventories with EDMS. Specifically INM results have been compared with ANE values and then logarithmically averaged to obtain the synthetic index while EDMS inventory results, for each pollutant, have been multiplied for their costs to obtain the LAP values. The procedure test has been run on three specific yearly scenarios, 1999, 2004, 2008, at three Italian major airports. Preliminary results show a good correspondence for ANE ( 2 dB) and a correlation between LAP calculated from EDMS and the time in mode.