An integrated index for airport noise

Italian and European legislations propose airport noise indicators based on acoustic climate in the round airport areas and noise exposed population density. Italian Environmental Minister Decree of 20th May 1999 defines an index for airport classification; furthermore, an European proposal concerning a new aircraft noise indicator is being discussed. These indicators are not suitable to evaluate airport “acoustic impact”-“strategic importance” ratio; in fact, transport and logistic airport characteristics are not taken into account. In this paper, an integrated airport noise index is proposed. The new index takes into account the previous indicators parameters but also airport characteristics such traffic data, logistic and connection structures and the airport strategic importance. The proposed indicator may be very useful for airport managing; at last, some Italian airports cases have been analyzed in order to test the proposed index.