Designing an Airspace Change Programme for the Lowest Achievable Environmental Impact
Edinburgh Airport is developing an airspace change programme (ACP) to increase runway and passenger capacity. WSP has been providing environmental assessment services for the project.
ACPs can cause considerable concern to noise affected communities because of new or modified flight paths. Minimising noise impacts while also minimising track length, fuel burn and carbon emissions requires detailed analysis.
In this webinar, we present an overview of the project and our use of a GIS multi-criteria analysis decision support tool, GoldSet, to inform the design of the flight paths. Goldset was developed to support the siting and routeing of ground-based infrastructure development projects; its application to flight path assessment is novel.
GoldSet was used to analyse detailed population density and the locations of noise sensitive receptors including educational, health & community facilities, places of worship, recreational areas, protected sites and habitats. The ‘flyability surface’ developed by GoldSet informed the standard instrument departures (SID) and standard instrument arrivals (STAR) design process. Subsequent Goldset analysis of the SID and STAR designs generated detailed metrics for overflown population (weighted by aircraft altitude), noise sensitive receptors and track miles (as a proxy for carbon & fuel burn). The metrics were used to inform and support the client’s decision making process for selection of the preferred flight paths that best balance the competing demands.
This webinar is aimed at clients in aviation or with complex infrastructure siting/routing challenges, plus senior practitioners in project development planning and environmental impact assessment.
Presenters:
James Ellaway, Technical Director – Water, WSP in the UK
Massimo Dragan, Digital Innovation Lead, WSP in Italy
Learn more about GoldSet: https://www.wsp.com/en-gl/services/go...