Efficient use of the Noise Budget at Schiphol Airport through Minimax Optimization of Runway Allocations

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a runway allocation planning tool that seeks to maximize the permissible number of flight operations into and out of an airport within a given annual noise budget. Although the model that underlies the planning tool is generic in nature, the tool has been customized for application to a specific airport, viz. Amsterdam airport Schiphol in the Netherlands. The noise budget regulations applicable at Schiphol stipulate limits on the annual cumulative noise loads at a large number of enforcement points arranged around the airport. To ensure an equitable distribution of the cumulative noise load at the enforcement points, an efficient allocation and distribution of the annual flight movements over available runways and routes is required that takes weather induced restrictions into account. To this end, a Linear Programming (LP) optimization formulation has been developed that implements a minimax performance criterion that aims to minimize the maximum cumulative noise load value occurring at any of the enforcement points. The numerical results obtained for the operational year 2005 clearly demonstrate the potential of the tool to maximize the yearly number of flight movements within the assigned noise budget.

Economic and environmental optimization of flight trajectories connecting a city-pair

“…6,18 The approach taken here is to specify a criterion that seeks to minimize the average acoustic energy at the measurement points through the minimization of the summated acoustic energies at all the measurement points. Note that acoustic energy E A at a measurement point i is related to SEL i at that measurement point by the following simple expression:…”

“…When dealing with multiple noise measurement points and single-event flyovers, there are various ways to go about in setting up an appropriate noise criterion that reflects the desire to reduce the noise levels in the measurement points in an equitable fashion. 6,18 The approach taken here is to specify a criterion that seeks to minimize the average acoustic energy at the measurement points through the minimization of the summated acoustic energies at all the measurement points. Note that acoustic energy E A at a measurement point i is related to SEL i at that measurement point by the following simple expression:…”

“…Similarly, to limit the noise disturbance for the population around Amsterdam airport, the Dutch government has specified limits for yearly day-evening-night average sound level L den in 35 enforcement points located in the direct vicinity of the airport. 18 To minimize the noise levels at the various monitoring/enforcement points located around both airports, the average acoustic energy received at these points (calculated separately for the two airports) has been adopted as one of the noise criteria taken into account in the multi-criteria scenarios. In the DOC criterion that has been adopted in all multi-criteria scenarios, a time to fuel unit cost ratio of 0.5 kg/s is assumed.…”