Helicopter operations: the environmental impact and ground facilities. Procedures and operational standards for the system’s acceptance.

The link between the heliports, environmental quality and safety is an important challenge in the field of helicopter transport. This challenge is especially crucial when the helicopter operations are carried out on densely urbanized areas. Often these areas have significant constraints and obstacles, particularly in terms of noise pollution. These constraints make the approach/takeoff maneuvers very complicated. The theme of the environmental sustainability of the rotorcraft is strongly felt in many countries. The production of noise is subjected to numerous rules and procedures, which tend to improve the acceptability of the helicopter by residents in neighboring areas to verti/heliports. The attention of manufacturers towards the problems of noise compatibility has produced technological innovations to reduce emissions, such as the shape of the tip of rotor blades, a speed reduction of rotation of the rotors, etc. Environmental concerns are becoming increasingly important when siting all aviation facilities. In particular, heliport facilities generate both positive and negative impacts on the surrounding environment. Negative impacts are mainly related to soil quality, water resources, safety issues, air environment (especially during the construction phase), noise (during operations) and biological environment. Positive ones could occur by the increase of emergency services, revenue generation, and the provision of a better connectivity with the neighborhoods located nearby the facility, the raise of employment opportunities and the general improvement of air transport facilities. The current international regulatory framework on heliport facilities seems to be lacking with regards to the evaluation of the environmental impacts of the heliport facilities. Moreover, the national rules on this topic are often undefined or vague. For this reason, it seems necessary to define guidelines to improve the awareness of the consequences which spontaneously arise from the planning and designing phase of heliports. Already from the site selection stage, heliport planners have to take into account all potential environmental issues. Noise is always the primary concern in these cases. A candidate site must be compatible with its surroundings. Compatibility must include any increase in activity resulting from IFR capability. Additional issues that citizens and municipalities are concerned about include air pollution, water pollution, ground access, and safety flight operations. Air pollution by helicopters is negligible although this issue may be brought up by concerned citizens and communities. Water pollution caused by fueling or maintenance facilities at a verti/heliport is coming under greater scrutiny. The ability to deal with all these public issues must be addressed during final site selection and community standards must be upheld. Ground access to a new transportation mode may increase traffic at and en route to that location and create a potential increase in noise and air pollution. These concerns must be dealt with in the design of ground access to the facility and by incorporating the individual community's standards, regulations, and goals. The receptivity of community leaders to work with the vertical landing facility to solve these problems should be measured in the final site selection process. Beyond the direct benefit of affecting the environment as little as possible, addressing environmental issues is an additional, albeit indirect tool, in obtaining and keeping good relations with the local government and its citizens. A heliport that has been developed into an IFR facility must be viable for a sufficient length of time to realize a return on investment (ROI) and to also achieve a contribution to the transportation system. In order to select a potentially viable heliport it is vital to consider the compatibility of surrounding land uses, both existing and future. A heliport that, at the present time, is considered by its neighbors as a nuisance cannot be counted on to remain in operation for an acceptable amount of time. Plans for future land use in the area must be determined through an investigation of planning documents at the appropriate levels (city, county, regional, etc.). Issues that instead will be addressed are related to the identification of the flight phases producing noise, by analyzing the different type of noise emission regarding the flight phase. Moreover, the role of helicopter’s pilot into the restraint of helicopter’s noise with particular regards to the driving behavior and its impact on noisiness’ reduction will be treated. In general, it can be stated that pilots have to do everything for reducing helicopter’s noise while remaining within the safety range’s parameters of the rotorcraft. Here comes the need of developing a worldwide analysis of the regulatory constraints for restricting helicopters’ impact on the populations residing nearby ground facilities. These constraints dictate operational rules for departure and approach phases of rotorcraft. Others factors affecting noise emissions are, for instance, temperature, humidity, wind, rotor blades. Standard procedures for noise abatement are: to fly at the highest altitude possible among those compatible with the airspace and safety rules; to enhance the awareness of the different noise perception that can be induced depending on the overflown environment (e.g. urban areas or country); The proposed study is articulated as follow: identification of measures to be implemented for reducing the environmental impact; analysis of current standard rules in several countries with regards to environmental constraints; proposals for initiatives aiming to the rules’ standardization regarding operations on heliports and helipads; samples of operational actions to be implemented for departure and approach phases; review of international experiences in the flight procedures applied for noise abatement

The analysis of urban travellers' latent preferences to explain their mode choice behaviour.

Our research aims to explore the impact of latent variables, mirroring urban travellers’ attitudes and perceptions, on the individual decision making process regarding the mode of transport. The paper describes the first results of an ongoing research activity, which derive from a pilot study conducted in Palermo, the capital of the Sicilian Region (in the south of Italy), and demonstrate that policy makers, in designing a socially desirable and environmentally sustainable urban mobility system, should take into account how travellers perceive the qualitative dimensions of transport

Localizzazione ottimale degli stalli per il parcheggio delle biciclette: il caso studio della città di Palermo - Optimal location for bike parking lots: the case study of the old town in Palermo

The lack of parking spaces for bicycles is one of the main issues that many cities face. A proper planning of a bike station network is necessary in order to optimize the whole urban system and the transport supply. In this work a step-by-step analysis is proposed to find the best location for the bicycle lots in the old town of Palermo. The optimization method includes the use of both a Set Covering Model and a Maximum Coverage Location Problem. The dataset for the simulations was collected by direct and indirect surveys on the population and implemented into Open source GIS software. In particular, data on the destinations, times and distances covered by the bicycles’ users were included. Finally, a cost-benefit analysis was made after a sizing phase of the lots. The proposed methodology can be applied to other contexts without loss of generality. It can also be used for the ex-post evaluation of an already existing network

Indicators for sustainable pedestrian mobility

Pedestrians walk everyday to satisfy their basic necessities. They need an environment that reflects their requirements and expectations, in other words “liveable” as much as possible. So we should offer tools that could allow a complete and clear evaluation of the existing walking environment, taking into account both pedestrian requirements and urban environment schemes. To measure pedestrian mobility performance we usually use indicators, which measure performances and grant a quick estimation of progress. Indicators are universally acknowledged synthetic and standard parameters that should help policy makers gauge whether things are going in the right direction or not. They should be outcome measures, rather than inputs, and they should capture broad results. The advantage of using indicators is to recognize the quality of urban mobility through economical and social view of an environment. The aim of this paper is to estimate and compare pedestrian mobility indicators, evaluating their value in relation to the quality of walking environment. It is important to analyze all the aspects that make it possible to clarify a definition of “sustainable pedestrian mobility”. Their analysis has to be related to the individuation of a set of indicators that simultaneously take into account the users’ needs and allow the complete comparison between different urban pedestrian mobility strategies policies. Variables such as visual attractiveness, comfort, system continuity, safety, security, accessibility and infrastructure quality of urban walking pathways are taken into account in our analysis. Finally, we analyze the generalized role that the proposed set of indicators could play in sustainable urban and transport development and planning, even in different economic social and urban contexts

Regional passenger transport. A comparison analysis between helicopter and seaplane

Heliports and seaplane bases are relatively small infrastructures able to serve medium or low volumes of regional traffic in poor accessible areas or in zones just located to the next proximity of the urban areas. The spatial extension of the airside is directly connected with the costs of the infrastructure and it is primarily determinate by the type of aircraft that uses the infrastructure and secondarily by the design expected traffic. The helicopter infrastructure is far smaller than that required for airplanes and seaplanes, since the first doesn’t suffers the lateral wind on the approach and landing direction. On the other hand, the rotorcraft suffers operative costs largely high than the seaplane. This study aims to develop a methodology to compare the feasibility of helicopter and seaplane regular transport of passengers towards destinations across a remote regional tourist context. In order to identify the service users, the authors use the results of a modal split model identifying the quota of passengers that potentially could use these two type of services, determined on the basis of previous studies on air transport demand. After the identification of the potential users, a technical analysis regarding transport supply is performed to identify the predominant features that should characterize helicopter/seaplane performances. The analysis focuses on capacity, fuel consumption and total cost per kilometre (taking account of fixed, variable and commercial costs together with those relative to labour force ATC and land-side services, flight infrastructure costs), but also on whether conditions that influence greatly the performance of fixed wing aircrafts. Subsequently an optimization model is applied to identify the routes that could overcome the breakeven point considering each of the two means of transport. Finally, the inference on the results allows drawing conclusions on the importance of each type of service and on the influence on it of flight infrastructure costs

A DEA-based transport heliports' efficiencies evaluation

Purpose - The purpose of the study is the evaluation of the efficiencies of a group of small Italian airports and the comparison with a set of transport heliports to show the difference in the productivity of the two types of infrastructures. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology used for the evaluation is the data envelopment analysis (DEA). Findings - The better performance of the heliports compared to the small inefficient airports. Research limitations/implications - This research is limited by the field of application and the weaknesses of the DEA methodology. However, it could be the first step for further works that will include more accurate models. Practical implications - The study suggests the conversion of the small inefficient airports into heliports feeding traffic towards the major hubs. The use of helicopters to reach poor accessible areas represents an alternative mode of transport. Originality/value - This is the first case of application of the DEA methodology to a group of heliports

A Data Envelopment Analysis methodology for the efficiency’s evaluation of a group of transport heliports offering scheduled flights

Heliports are relatively small infrastructures able to serve medium volumes of regional traffic in poor accessible areas or in zones just located to the next proximity, or in some cases inside, urban areas. The spaces required for the movement of heli-copters on the airsides of these infrastructures are far smaller than those required for airplanes. This characteristics derives from the great flexibility of the VTOL in mov-ing in tight spaces. On the other hand, the need for land saving especially in those filled areas within the major cities requires infrastructures large no more than a block. The use of the helicopter as a mean of transport to serve the traffic between cities and airports is a way to improve the performances of the major hubs by the de-congestion of traffic affecting both the landside and the airside and to increase the at-tractiveness towards otherwise inaccessible zones. This paper seeks to evaluate the efficiency of some heliports by using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The DEA is a non-parametric method used in Opera-tions Research for measuring and evaluating the performance of a group of DMUs (Decision Making Units). There is a great variety of applications of DEA for use in evaluating the performances of many different kinds of entities (hospitals, universi-ties, enterprises, airports etc.) engaged in different activities in many different con-texts in many different countries. Here we intend to investigate the inefficiencies linked to the infrastructural and operational features of a group of transport heliports where scheduled flights are supplied. Both CCR and BCC models are implemented to evaluate the efficiency in the Constant Returns to Scale (CRS) and Variable Re-turns to Scale (VRS) cases. Inputs and outputs are selected in virtue of the aim that we want to pursue in each simulation, on the basis of the infrastructural and opera-tional requirements of the heliports. In order to highlight the ranking of the DMUs under evaluation, a super-efficiency model is applied to the same peer group of heliports. The super-efficiency score enables one to distinguish between the efficient observations. In particular, the super-efficiency measure examines the maximal radial change in inputs and/or out-puts for an observation to remain efficient. Finally, the inference on the results allows to draw conclusions on the im-portance of the heliports as infrastructures to serve passenger traffic

GNSS/WEB-GIS heliport planning in a regional area for VTOL transport services

The role of the helicopter in airport planning and air traffic analysis is fundamental with re-gard to both the qualitative and quantitative increasing of the demand and the technical en-hancement of the aircrafts. This leads to infrastructural and organizational issues. Such a need finds a plausible solution in the implementation of a helicopter service and the creation of a heliport network linked to the airport, road and rail systems. Part of the issue of airport planning and design is the study of helicopters’ utilization for purposes other than commer-cial such as aerial work and civil protection. The helicopter is indeed essential in all those uses based on the capabilities that it has such as the possibility to quickly reach any part of the territory generally foreclosed to other modes of transport, to hover and to land and take-off with very high slope angles. In January 2011 the “Regional Plan of heliports in Sicily” was approved through the regional committee resolution by authorizing the expenditure of 30% of the resources coming from the Operational Program FESR 2007-2013. In the descriptive section of operational tasks the Plan highlights how “…it is increasingly necessary for the regional community to develop a network of helipads widely distributed and integrated with the local and national infrastruc-tures, to serve urban settlements for HEMS, SAR and transport purposes”. The project aims to “specialize” the service, the related infrastructures for different types and it states regula-tory standards (and also integrations of existing regulations) and the construction features in-to a perspective of an integrated territorial planning in full compliance with the environmen-tal sustainability. Therefore helicopter services could complement or substitute the regional air traffic, especially in those areas of higher cultural and landscape interest (small islands, archaeological sites, monuments etc.) and poorly accessible zones, not neglecting their prin-cipal role of search and rescue missions and for civil protection. With regard to the integrat-ed territorial planning and, more specifically, to the preliminary infrastructural design (heli-ports and helipads) a fundamental role is played by GNSS/WEB-GIS. The use of specific GIS features (GNSS stations data, digital terrain models, orthophotos of selected zones, links among infrastructures etc.) and operational research methods could be expected to find the optimal distribution of the infrastructures onto the territory. These resources allow to make structured analysis and queries, via specific requests (proximity to roads and highways, pres-ence of sensitive areas, services etc.) aimed at identifying the potential sites to optimize the locations, to improve the accessibility and to widen the catchment areas. This approach could make it possible to establish priorities in the construction of the infrastructures in relation to the constructions costs and the coverage of the whole territory. The adopted methodology is based on Integer Linear Programming model able to find the optimal solution of a Set Cover-ing Problem. In this way it is possible to reach the aim of the implementation of an integrat-ed and effective service both for HEMS and civil protection needs, also taking in to account the economical features. Technical standards will ensure high operability under safety and security constraints for raising helipads to heliports according to airworthiness requirements