Reducing Airport Pollution and Consequent Health Impacts to Local Community

Abstract

Research shows that air pollution caused by a large airport could be equivalent to that produced by many hundreds of miles of freeway traffic. Airplane air pollution include ultrafine sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other toxic particles, which not only affect employees and passengers on airport and residents near airport but could spread to as far as 10 miles and cause health concerns of a significant amount of population. This study looks into the sources of local air pollution from aviation activities, for instance, ground access vehicles to and from the airport, aircraft taxiing at airfield surface, landing and take-off (LTO) cycle of aircraft, airport ground equipment etc. and calculate the air pollution inventory of case study airport by using FAA Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT). The natural extension of this study is to estimate the benefit pools of operational improvements due to increased productivity and implementation of emerging technologies/procedures. A simulation-based scenario analysis will be performed to quantify the emission mitigations. The scenarios that are worthy of study include: electrification of ground support equipment (GSE); deployment of alternative aircraft taxiing systems (AATS), and integrated arrival, departure, and surface (IADS) traffic management.