Jake A. Plante
Analysis and Evaluation Branch, Office of Environment and Energy, Federal Aviation Administration, Washington, DC 20590
The ability to accurately assess and predict noise exposure is an increasingly important factor in the design and implementation of airport and airspace improvements. To meet this challenge, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Environment and Energy (AEE) is undertaking a series of operations research initiatives to improve the modeling and other quantitative methods used to evaluate aviation noise impacts. A major effort in recent years has been the redesign of the integrated noise model (INM 5.0) in Windows. While rewritten in a different computer language, the noise calculation algorithms in 5.0 remain essentially the same as V4.11, based on the SAE-AIR-1845 methodology. There are, however, many technical enhancements to the computer code which provide faster run times and more accurate noise predictions. Among the enhancements are (1) a noise calculation module that is between 1.5 and 6 times faster depending on the study case, (2) a new exposure fractioning algorithm for improved accuracy, (3) additions to the aircraft database, (4) new metrics (e.g., L[sub max], L[sub eq(n)], user-defined), (5) user-defined profile generation for the study of noise abatement landings and approaches, (6) a lateral track dispersion methodology, and (7) GIS analysis with Census, CAD, NFDC, elevation, and ARTS radar data capabilities.