The estimation of cumulative noise exposure caused by aircraft traffic

Community noise caused by aircraft traffic is examined in relation to its estimation by predictive and measurement methods. The basic properties of the noise exposure at any airport-vicinity site are shown to be mainly defined by the statistics of the peak-level occurrence and noise duration distributions over a given time period. The relationship between these distributions is derived in terms of traffic parameters. This leads to the derivation of an equation for the evaluation of Leq , which makes use of information usually acquired for an NNI assessment and which is directly comparable with the NNI formula. An important result of the study is the development of a simple and convenient method for predicting aircraft noise exposures, by which various noise indices (NNI, Leq, LNP, L10 etc.) can be directly evaluated.