An estimate of the global impact of commercial aviation noise

This study estimates the impacts of commercial aviation noise at 181 airports around the world. These airports are located in 38 countries plus Taiwan, with 95 of the airports located in the United States. They are part of the 190 Shell 1 airports in the FAA's Model for Assessing Global Exposure to the Noise of Transport Aircraft (MAGENTA), which comprise an estimated 91% of total global aviation noise exposure [FAA 2008]. The model calculates both physical and monetary impacts of aviation noise. The physical metrics are the number of people exposed to 55 dB or more noise, and the number of people highly annoyed. The model uses a noise depreciation index developed from hedonic pricing studies of housing transactions to monetize the effects on property owners in terms of housing value loss and rent changes. Due to data collection difficulties the impacts are only approximately consistent chronologically. Population data are from the years 2000 and 2001 depending on the country, while house prices and rents are 2006 estimates, and noise levels are for the year 2005. Based on there data, we calculated that around the 181 airports more than 14 million people are exposed to at least 55 dB of commercial aviation noise. Of these individuals, approximately 2.3 million are highly annoyed. We found that the noise resulted in a total of $21 billion of housing value depreciation, which is equivalent to about $1.1 billion per year using a 30-year life of the house and a 3% discount rate, and an additional $800 million of lost rent each year. The impacts are spread over all parts of the world. Although most of the airports included in this study are located in the US and Europe, each continent with an airport in the study had airports with greater than $100 million in housing value loss and greater than 200,000 exposed people.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2008

Author dc:creator

• Kish, Christopher (Christopher John)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Ian A. Waitz.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/44932

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/44932