Assessing the performance of ECAC’s Doc. 29 aircraft noise model using ADS-B data

To assess the noise exposure of people living near airports, the ECAC’s best-practice aircraft noise model Doc. 29 is used within the EU. In a typical application, this model calculates the noise levels of flights over a given period of time, which are summed and averaged to produce noise contour maps for long-term noise metrics around airports.
In order to gain an insight into potential shortcomings of the model, the model was implemented as an in-house software tool. Flights at Hanover Airport in the year 2022 were then calculated with this software tool and compared with measured noise data. The differences between the two were grouped according to specific criteria, such as type of operation or measurement position, and it was assessed whether it was possible to detect significant differences between two groups of data and then to quantify the magnitude of these differences using the Mann-Whitney U test and its effect size. In addition, the effect of the atmospheric correction term proposed by the model on noise events occurring under conditions considered to be outside the range of a standard atmosphere was evaluated.
It could be analyzed that the type of operation has a great influence on the performance of the model. In addition, both the location of the noise receiver and the type of aircraft have a non-negligible influence. With respect to meteorological conditions, both the differences between model and noise recordings and the standard deviation of these differences increased with increasing wind speed. By applying the proposed atmospheric correction, the mean of the differences between model and noise recordings decreased, but the standard deviation increased.