Overview
A significant number of European Airports Authorities are subject to social pressure by citizens and Public Administration to take action to reduce airport noise, but no technical solution has been so far successful. EU is going to enforce noise standards. The European Parliament has decided unanimously the "resolution on night flights and noise pollution near airports". The Parliament "is concerned about the persistent and increasing noise levels at some airports which can have a serious effect on the health of local residents" and says "the residential public should not be deprived of sleep by the pressure on commercial operations at airports in the vicinity". The parliament calls on the Commission to draw up proposals for a Community framework on noise classification and considers several measures for noise abatement.
The projects aim is to offer a short-term technical solution to monitor noise caused by air traffic in areas surrounding airports. Main objective of the proposed project MONSTER is the realisation of a low-cost system and a set of services directed to enable final users (airports, neighboring communities) to monitor the airport noise problem. Monster system will be based on two main components a software module and a hardware net of sensors.
The MONSTER system starts from the application coming into a market product. A hardware/software solution, specifically designed for the acquisition and processing of noise parameters, will be designed and implemented. The noise parameters will be evaluated partly in the field, partly in the central elaboration unit, thus reducing the necessary transmission bandwidth and giving the possibility to tailor the calculated parameters to the needs of the customer
Funding
Results
The MONSTER system has been assembled based on off-the-shelf-components and has shown the following performance:
- general good reliability of the system
- accurate noise acquisition
- good usability as a result of an intensive work of data analysis and reporting
- ability to identify the acoustic signature of airplanes
Technical Implications
Further envisaged action are:
- improvement of the system compactness and reduction of weight
- improvement of network integration
- extension of the validation of the MOE in further cases and with a large number of radar tracks
- extension of testing over a longer time-span
- agreement with a large number of airports to test and validate the MONSTER system in different conditions
- perform contacts with other potential clients and establish commercial agreement for the exploitation of the system over Europe
Policy implications
None