ASSESSMENT OF AIRTRAFFIC NOISE NEAR IGI AIRPORT DELHI USING VARIOUS NOISE PREDICTION MODELS

Abstract

The need for controlling community noise is being felt with increasing intensity each passing day. Studies have shown that Aircrafts operating at Airports constitute one of the major sources of noise, which have an impact on the community in the vicinity of Airports. Aircrafts are the single most disturbing sources of environmental noise around busy airports, which is known to cause annoyance, sleep disturbance, physiological stress, and interference in speech communication in offices, schools and disturbance in leisure activities. The Dissertation proposal envisaged assessment of noise level in the vicinity of IGI Airport in the areas, which are thickly populated and are directly subjected to noise impact due to landing and take-off of different aircrafts, which operate at the Airport. The objective of the project included measurement to be carried out at a large number of stations through out the year to get a picture of the noise climate, which exists in the vicinity of the Airport. In this Dissertation an attempt is made to evaluate Noise and Number Index (NNI) to be used as a measure to study the effect of aircraft noise on the population living around the Airport and which are directly coming under the landing and take-off path of the Aircrafts. NNI is being followed in U.K. and other countries and is also recommended by ICAO. The evaluation of Noise Exposure Forecast (NEF) and other indices requires identification of the kind of each and every aircraft, which is operating from the Airport. This turned out to be a very difficult task since this data could not be made available. However, an empirical relation between NNI and NEF does exist which can give an idea of the range of NEF values at any measurement point for which NNI is known. A large number of measurements were made round the clock on different dates spread over different seasons during last one year. L