The need for improvement in airport noise assessment methodology is summarized and specific investigations of the relationship between noise level and individual and community response outlined

Morgan, H. G.

English

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WORKSHOP I
SUMMARYOF AIRPORTTECHNOLOGYNEEDS
Homer G. Morgan, Chief, ANRD, Langley Research Center: The Airport Noise
Group was made up of people who tended to have a long association with airport
noise problems; thus the group had an extensive corporate memory. These
people pointed out that politi'cs and economics tend to outweigh psychoacoustics
in the real world of airports and community noise. However, they supported a
conti'nuing need for improving our understanding of humanresponse to noise,
even though decisions are ultimately based on the realities of life in the
community.
The group consensus was that noise assessment methodology is unreliable,
primarily because of the inability to account for all of the variabilities
of indi:viduals and communities. Noise impact is not consistently quantified,
even though the best information available is used. The unreliability in
methodology leadsto lack of confidence on the part of the public in decisions
that must be made. Yhus, both the public and the technical people are dis-
satisfied with the results. The impact quantification problem is very complex,
but the public demands simple measures. Even though the tools for quantifYing
psychoacoustic impact are getting better and better, prediction of political
consequences is still out of reach. Progress has been made and more is needed,
but we must recognize that completely satisfactory answers are unlikely to
be achievable.
Research by NASAto develop a better relationship between noise dose
and individual and community response should be pursuedwith the assurance
that a better understanding of this relationship would be applied by people
working on real airport noise problems. Both laboratory research and field
testing appear to be required for continued progress in understanding air-
port/community noise impact, and these should be used, as appropriate, to
answer specific questions. Whenever community surveys are conducted, they
should be accompanied by physical noise measurements in order to improve their
accuracy and utility. It was also pointed out that health effects (if any)
attributable to aircraft need to be quantified. Itwas also generally agreed
that communication between community groups and active researchers as repre-
sented by this workshop was Valuable; and that this effort should be continued.
Twogeneral approaches to further research in the area were discussed.
They may beroughly described as (I) a multidimensional, organization dynamics
approach to studying community characteristics, and (2) the traditional psycho-
acoustics approach of laboratory and field testing. The majority of the
participants believed that the latter approach had a better chance of contri-
buting to the research effort. Within the traditional psychoacoustics approach,
the group selected five factors as topics for further study. In descending
order of importance, they are:
(I) Time-of-day effects (4) Dwell
(2) Noise level versus number (5) Ambient noise level effects
of operations
(3) Complaint insight
3O
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19820023197 2020-03-21T07:55:23+00:00Z


Summary of airport technology needs

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