Nicholas P. Miller -
nmiller@hmmh.com
and Grant S. Anderson
Harris Miller Miller & Hanson Inc.
15 New England Executive Park
Burlington, MA 01803
Popular version of paper 2aNCd4
Presented Tuesday morning, October 18, 2005
ASA/NOISE-CON 2005 Meeting, Minneapolis, MN
People living around airports complain that they are awakened by nighttime aircraft operations. Often, this complaint is raised when airports propose changes in flight operations. Will the new operations awaken many more people? The analysis presented in this paper answers that question. Traditional efforts to determine when nighttime aircraft operations will awaken people have typically focused on when the "average person" would be awakened by the sound of a single airplane. Use of such information to assess a full night of operations has short-comings: it does not account for person-to-person variation in sensitivity to noise; it is difficult to apply to a realistic mix of nighttime operations. Acoustical consultants Grant Anderson and Nicholas Miller (nmiller@hmmh.com) of Harris Miller Miller & Hanson, Inc. will present a more sophisticated re-analysis of aircraft noise and awakening data, in order to account for the effects of multiple aircraft flying throughout the night, as well as the personal variations in the amount of noise needed to awaken an individual. Results can be presented graphically as "contours" giving the percent of people likely to be awakened.
