An Integrated Approach to Optimised Airport Environmental Management

Airports around the world continue to face issues related to the environmental impact of aviation. Mitigation measures have therefore been implemented at many of these airports. Attaining an optimal combination of these mitigation measures is a complex process and because of these complexities, this process does not always result in the most efficient solution in terms of environmental impact.
It is expected that some of the inefficiencies of mitigation measures can be eliminated by using a process that is based on three main principles: to use mathematical optimisation in order to select the best mitigation options, to evaluate multiple performance areas simultaneously, and to evaluate multiple mitigation options at multiple levels of aggregation simultaneously. These three principles have therefore been implemented as capabilities in an integrated decision support system, to determine whether such a system could help improve the airport environmental management process.
Based on the results obtained with the developed support system, the benefits resulting from each of the three capabilities are demonstrated. But ultimately, it is shown that especially the combination of these three capabilities, integrated into a single support system, contributes to improving the airport environmental management process.