Towards greener airports: Development of an assessment framework by leveraging sustainability reports and rating tools

Abstract

Airports are a vital part of the aviation infrastructure that promotes socio-economic development and environmental pollution. Arguably there are no mature green building rating tools for assessing the construction and operation of airports. There is a justified and imminent need for developing such a green rating tool for airports considering the following: (i) carbon emission potential, (ii) number of passengers served, (iii) number of flights operated, and (iv) the expansion of air-routes to newer destinations in developing nations which has directly resulted in an exponential proliferation in the number of airports. This paper aims to develop an airport-specific green rating framework. This framework can be realized as a tool that assesses the greenery of airport operations based on environmental indicators. Content Analysis approach is used to retrieve environmental information from airport sustainability reports and green building information gateway for inferring the relationship between parameters of business and environmental interests. Green Airport assessment framework is developed considering the existing categories and environmental indicators present in GBRT's used for current green airport evaluation, and the important environmental indicators from airport sustainability reports. The developed framework forms a vital basis for the construction of green rating tool for airport operations.