While the health impacts of exposure to aircraft noise continue to be investigated the fact remains that airport operational policies and future plans for capacity expansion must be based on the best possible information on those at risk of exposure. Generally, this risk is assessed by computing aircraft noise dosage for a typical day of operations, which is then combined with residential population estimates from a census or other appropriate source. While this gives an overall impression of what might be termed the total noise load such an approach in our opinion suffers from two major short-comings. This paper details an approach designed to address both of these problems. The approach takes hourly geographic information system-based flight movement information and combines this with hourly population estimates that we derive through a computational procedure from a household travel survey. We then apply the approach to study a range of scenarios associated with operations at Sydney's Kingsford-Smith International airport. The results and insights have important ramifications for policy-makers planning flight operations and residential settlement patterns in impacted areas. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214666.
Abstract