Air traffic assignment to reduce population noise exposure using activity-based approach

• Published in: Transportation research. Part D, Transport and environment Vol. 63; pp. 58 - 71
• Main Authors: Ganić, Emir, Babić, Obrad, Čangalović, Mirjana, Stanojević, Milan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-08-2018
• Subjects: Airport; Daily migration; Heuristic algorithm; Noise abatement measure; Noise abatement measure; Daily migration; Heuristic algorithm; Airport
• ISSN: 1361-9209; 1879-2340
• DOI: 10.1016/j.trd.2018.04.012

•New noise abatement measure is proposed.•Air traffic assignment considers temporal and spatial variations in population.•Number of people highly annoyed by noise is reduced by 82% compared to Base case.•Fuel consumption increased by merely 0.72% due to proposed air traffic assignment.
Aircraft noise has been regarded as one of the major environmental issues related to air transport. Many airports have introduced a variety of measures to reduce its impact. Several air traffic assignment strategies have been proposed in order to allocate noise more wisely. Even though each decision regarding the assignment of aircraft to routes should consider population exposure to noise, none of the air traffic assignment strategies has addressed daily migrations of population and number of people exposed to noise. The aim of this research is to develop a mathematical model and a heuristic algorithm that could assign aircraft to departure and arrival routes so that number of people exposed to noise is as low as possible, taking into account temporal and spatial variations in population in an airport’s vicinity. The approach was demonstrated on Belgrade airport to show the benefits of the proposed model. Numerical example showed that population exposure to noise could be reduced significantly by applying the proposed air traffic assignment model. As a consequence of the proposed air traffic assignment, overall fuel consumption increased by less than 1%.