Today's airports are at times unable to handle the air traffic demand. The busiest airports are already saturated, and there are political and environmental difficulties associated with any further airport expansion. In view of the anticipated growth in air traffic demand, there is a clear need for economically beneficial capacity improvements in an environmentally responsible manner. However, the required capacity growth cannot be achieved by relying on existing technologies, policies and procedures. To provide solutions for environmentally induced capacity bottlenecks, the authors' research is aimed at the development of a new integrated concept for managing the environmental impact of flight operations into and out of airports.The set of fully integrated noise management tools that the authors envision includes interrelated tools at the strategic level (annual/seasonal noise allocation planning), the tactical/operational level (sequencing and scheduling of flights and separation assurance) and the trajectory level (selection of noise-optimised routes and flight profiles). The proposed integrated environmental management tool provides decision support to air traffic controllers to enable traffic management on the basis of throughput efficiency and safety in concert with noise exposure and emission considerations. The objective of this book is to outline the envisaged integrated environmental management concept, and to summarise our research efforts related to the main enabling capabilities (tools) that underlie this concept. |