Determining causes of variance in ground-level aircraft noise: Combining in-situ noise and weather measurements with spatial aircraft data

Aircraft are a source of noise pollution in areas surrounding airports. Buildings shield or amplify local sound levels, albeit that the level of shielding varies considerably. The sound pressure levels reaching ground receivers in the built environment depend on flight position relative to the receiver, atmospheric and weather effects, and the composition of the surrounding buildings. Their combined effect on local ground sound levels and noise shielding remains unclear however.

The impact of urban and architectural design on the local attenuation of aircraft noise is studied in a full-scale field lab near Amsterdam Schiphol airport. In the experiment, two microphones and a weather station collected sound and meteorological data. The measurements are combined with spatial aircraft radar data for a period of one month. Statistical analyses are conducted to gain insights into the causes of variance in shielding effects.

This paper presents a method to combine and analyse sound, flight and meteorological data, for one-second time intervals. Aircraft orientation, obstruction from buildings between source and receiver, operation type and propulsion type influence the building shielding for this case study. The orientation of airplanes relative to the field lab records the highest effect on the shielding of the analysed variables (R^2=0.58).