Calculation of annual aircraft noise exposure for Geneva and Zurich airports with the next-generation program sonAIR - first results

Abstract

The next-generation aircraft noise simulation program sonAIR was designed to precisely predict single flights with the scope of investigating and optimizing noise abatement flight procedures. Recently, sonAIR was implemented in a geographic information system (GIS) to make it suitable for noise mapping calculations of entire airport scenarios. In this study, we conducted first calculations of annual aircraft noise exposure with sonAIR for Geneva and Zurich airports, Switzerland, for the year 2017, simulating several 10'000 single flights and accounting for real conditions in great detail (e.g., detailed emission modelling and considering ground cover in the sound propagation calculation). Our calculations proved the ability of sonAIR to do annual aircraft noise calculations with many simulated flights. Comparing the results to those obtained with the best-practice program FLULA2, which is currently used for official aircraft noise calculations in Switzerland, we found that the noise contours differ on average little in areas with legally relevant noise exposure. However, locally larger differences may occur, primary due to varying ground cover and more detailed sound emission modelling. In this contribution, we present the process of sonAIR for annual aircraft noise calculations, show the most important results and discuss implications for future aircraft noise calculations around airports.