Final Report Summary - COSMA (Community Oriented Solutions to Minimise aircraft noise Annoyance)
Executive Summary:
SEFA (FP6 project 2004-2007) was the first & unique approach to apply sound engineering practices on aircraft (a/c) exterior noise, i.e. not just lowering levels but also by improving the a/c noise characteristics & signatures. Synthesized a/c target sounds were generated and validated by laboratory listening tests single flyover events have been evaluated and rated with respect to their preference and possible design criteria for a/c have been identified to achieve those sounds. As SEFA was restricted to a preference scaling & single flyovers, COSMA should now follow the next step, i.e. design of a/c and its operations for a minimum of annoyance in airport communities. COSMA would significantly progress beyond the state-of-the-art in terms of a/c noise engineering.
Since a couple of years there is a growing demand for the understanding of the effects of a/c noise in the airport surrounding community. Meanwhile the aim is to develop techniques that are required for the description of the impact of a/c noise around airports. One of the most ambitious goals is the development of engineering guidelines and methods for the implementation of suitable design and operating practices. Those developments will help to minimize community a/c noise annoyance in the future. But this can only be achieved if capable and validated tools are available. One of COSMA’s central aim was to provide a set of powerful tools, which combine the acoustical understanding of a/c engineering on noise source basis, with the factors that determine the characteristics of a community friendly a/c and operations, which enable a long term innovative and complementary way to minimize the annoyance on communities around airports. The success of COSMA was directly associated with the availability and effectiveness of this tool set at the end of the project.
COSMA, a project funded by EC contract ACP8-GA-2009-234118 within the Framework 7, was established by five technical work packages
• WP1 - Specifications, assessment and exploitation
• WP2 - Annoyance examinations
• WP3 - Sound engineering
• WP4 - Virtual resident
• WP5 - Optimization of airport noise scenarios.
While in WP3 and WP4 the tool set had to be developed and validated, WP2 has been targeting the noise annoyance studies that will be used to describe the factors, which are relevant as input data for the Virtual Resident tool (VRes) design in WP4. Finally, WP5 has provided the optimization for pre-selected airport scenarios, including single and multiple events for take-off and landing.
After a total run time of 46 months (originally planned were 36 months), the project has been a successful collaboration among the a/c noise engineers, sound designers and the noise effects experts, to ensure the that the work on noise effects was clearly targeted to improve a/c design and operation, by combining 3 different scientific and engineering domains:
• The noise annoyance & psychometrics domain,
• The sound engineering domain,
• The a/c noise engineering domain.
All three domains together have been defining this innovative and collaborative approach in order to reduce perceived noise annoyance by 50 % by 2020.
Under the technical guidance of industry experts, COSMA integrated contributions from research organisations and SME’s, with complementary expertise in psycho-acoustics, health effects, sound design techniques, airport and a/c noise engineering, bringing together the multi-disciplinary background that was required for achieving the objectives. 21 beneficiaries have been involved from 9 different countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and UK. The budget of the project added up to slightly below 6,000,000 Euro, with an average funding rate of about 69 %. The overall effort totalled 500 person months. COSMA is associated with the X-NOISE network.
A panel of external experts accompanied the project, performing project assessments after 18 months and at the Final Meeting.
Project Context and Objectives:
Major airports across Europe reached their noise capacity before using the runway and terminal infrastructure fully. Others struggle to gain approval for further development as a result of the noise implications of future traffic growth, despite the proven demand for air travel that exists in the regions they serve. This has resulted in a strong increase of local airport noise restrictions.
To establish the context, the noise benefits from a strong trend in the implementation noise abatement procedures have to be distinguished from other limiting measures. For local purposes, these restrictions do address the noise disturbance issue by using a series of measures, not necessarily consistent from region to region and somewhat difficult to reconcile for the manufacturers to transfer into design criteria.
A/c noise disturbance involves in fact a complex interaction of a number of physical, biological, psychological and sociological processes. The relevant physical factors are associated with noise generation, e.g. the a/c type, mode of operation, pattern of operations at airport level and the resulting noise level. The other components are human factors, which include basic biological systems of audition, followed by psychological processes that interpret these signals, and can include health status, annoyance and stress.
The further interpretation of noise disturbance can be subjected to sociological conditioning that may include factors such as socio-economic status, cultural and lifestyle differences. Finally, although individuals may complain about the 'noise’ of a/c a variety of other factors such as fear of air accidents or disturbance from other airport activities can be the underlying cause of annoyance, and each type of annoyance does exhibit different characteristics and certainly different absolute noise levels. In particular complementary factors were addressed, e.g. impact of flight trajectory, impact of separation time between operations & influence of number of operations, to establish the conditions of effective Sound Engineering Design within the frame of an airport operational context. A comprehensive work plan was created to achieve the main objectives:
• Improve the understanding of the effects of a/c noise in the airport surrounding community.
• Develop techniques for modelling the impact of a/c noise around airports.
• Develop engineering guidelines and methods implementing suitable design and operating practices aimed at minimising community a/c noise annoyance, supported by a set of validated tools.
• Establish the ANIKBEM data base.
The first two objectives provided the required knowledge and capabilities which in the end were necessary to achieve the overall project objectives.
The expectations in COSMA’s progress vs. the state-of-the-art are summarized in the following innovations:
• The project concept and objective to design a/c and their operations for a minimum of annoyance in the surrounding airport community
• Field annoyance examinations providing acute (functional?) annoyance correlated with the real time signal and sound file for each polluting a/c
• Laboratory annoyance examinations with synthesized a/c sounds, which allow the validation of optimized operations for future airport scenarios and future a/c designs
• The Airport Community Sound Engineering tool (AComSE), including the AIRPORT NOISE CLIMATE SYNTHESIZER as a powerful sound synthesis tool that is able to synthesize airport noise scenarios for any location in an airport community and the SOUND SYNTHESIS MACHINE which allows an interactive optimization of single event sound quality for the whole flyover event
• The VRes tool allowing a reliable assessment of annoyance of residents in the vicinity of airports and the prediction of annoyance due to future airport scenarios
• The ANIKBEM aimed at further developing and managing knowledge in the field to ensure design practices and scientific information are being kept up to date.
Project Results:
In WP1 power plant & a/c definitions have been provided to define the configurations of 3 a/c for current and future scenarios. A literature review was performed, lists & ranks of moderator variables affecting annoyance and sleep disturbance near airports, based on available literature were established and recommendations were given to WP2. The Aviation Noise Impact Knowledge Base and Exchange Mechanism (ANIKBEM) got specified. A demonstrator was implemented, using support from COSMA public website & X-NOISE public and secure websites. It will be maintained and further developed by X-NOISE beyond COSMA’s end.
Annoyance studies were done in WP2. Telephone & field studies at 3 different European airports were performed. An extended analysis of previous data of the Frankfurt study 2005 FRA-S showed important acoustical & non-acoustical factors for the prediction of long-term and short-term (hourly) a/c noise annoyance, which could be (1) considered in the methodology for the telephone and field studies and (2) served as a first database input for the Virtual Resident (VRes) development. One possibility to reduce annoyance near airports is to improve sound quality of future a/c flyovers. Using the Sound Synthesis Machine (SSM) subjects were able to create their preferred sounds for different a/c. These improved “future” a/c sounds, so-called target sounds, were examined in three comprehensive living-room atmosphere laboratory studies to show the potential for annoyance reduction.
The outcomes of WP3 are a dedicated sound engineering tool which was developed to allow a sound quality accurate synthesis and analysis of a/c flyover noise events in airport communities. The tool is composed of two components: (1) On-line SSM tool for interactive sound quality analysis of single a/c flyovers and (2) AIRPORT NOISE CLIMATE SYNTHESIZER (ANCS) producing multiple event sound sequences in real airport scenarios based on source component data and noise propagation models. Beside this work several airport scenarios were synthesized, based on WP5 engineering guidelines for a/c designs and operations.
In WP4 the VRes tool was developed to simulate human subjective perception of a/c noise. The tool can predict human response to (1) single a/c sounds, (2) hourly a/c noise exposure and (3) the long-term annoyance. Three kinds of data came from the field studies: long-term annoyance by telephone interviews & computed acoustical data, hourly-annoyance by SPL measurements and hourly based participants’ ratings and single flyover sound preference by noise recordings, again rated. The single used core algorithm needs different pre-processing to bring the different kinds of data into the same format and a very strong data reduction was needed. After building & fine tuning, the VRes was extensively tested. The accuracy of the models is reasonably, the correlation between predictions & actual ratings is ~0.7-0.8 for all kinds of used data.
WP5 was more strictly related to the aeronautical engineering domain. Two main functions, deeply interconnected with all WP, can be identified: (1) Support of all WP by providing technical information & data. (2) Give engineering recommendations, design directions, operational constraints to achieve community friendly aviation systems. Technical achievements are: (1) A database of 2D noise optimized procedures, incl. noise spectra at specified positions on the ground and a database of optimized sequences of take-off and landing events, optimized with respect to objectives related to the a/c involved (number/type). (2) A tool for the sequence generation of sound files from recordings/simulations. (3) A large database of multi-objective, multidisciplinary optimizations of 3D procedures, including complete sets of a/c settings to be used for synthesis of sound files. (4) A database of spectra to describe low noise technologies on the most energetic a/c noise sources, taking into account novel engine installation.
Potential Impact:
COSMA’s technical scope & work plan have aimed to address the ACARE goals and priorities and had the ambitious objective of consolidating the relationship between the technology optimization process and how the a/c sound is perceived. The break-through approach, firmed up in COSMA through the added operational dimension, should allow the European Aerospace industries:
• To design low annoyance a/c able to meet society’s needs for more environmentally friendly air transport
• To win & foster the global leadership for European aeronautics.
The project has been focused on addressing a widespread European issue considered as an environmental priority and required then a European approach for a maximum impact. Furthermore, the following aspects ought to be emphasized:
• The need to take advantage of the significant EC research effort aimed at noise reduction (Technology and NAPs)
• The need to address noise sensitivity from an extended geographic perspective while regrouping the best expertise.
By its content, the project has been focusing on investigating annoyance factors that were not encompassed in current noise descriptors. It was then anticipated that the knowledge developed in COSMA would be put to good use in supporting EU interests and positions in such discussions. The capability to format specific results of the project following ad hoc requests from regulatory bodies was built in the project’s overall exploitation policy.
From a point of view strictly related to the aeronautical engineering, COSMA represents the first attempt to establish a consistent approach to introduce the sound quality and the community acceptance among the design constraints and procedural requirements. Undoubtedly, the complexity of the technical, physiological, societal, and cultural phenomena involved makes the availability of a reliable design tool a goal that still requires a substantial amount of work. Nevertheless, the results achieved so far, and the knowledge matured during COSMA reveal that this is a path that deserves to be followed. One of the potential consequences of such an approach (and not a secondary one) is represented by the attractiveness of the project outside the technical engineering community. Indeed, the feedback received after some of the dissemination activities completed has demonstrated that the COSMA approach, which focuses the attention on people rather than on machines, catches the interest of the civil society much more than the classical technology-based assessment of the environment friendliness of the commercial aviation.
Regarding the dissemination final recommendations were made to favor further exploitation of the project’s achievements. They include the organization of legacy archives, covering key results & core data as well as proposals for a dedicated annoyance workshop, co-located at the INTER-NOISE 2013 and supported by X-Noise
The activity related to the Aviation Noise Impact Knowledge Base and Exchange Mechanism (ANIKBEM) was given time to better formulate the concept and associated issues. First a specification document was produced to provide preliminary requirements from the systems aspects and a demonstrator has been implemented in practice using support from the COSMA Public Website as well as the X-NOISE Public and Secure Websites, thanks to the features described in the previous section. The demonstrator will be maintained and further developed by X-NOISE after the end of the COSMA project.
A dedicated COSMA public website is accessible under http://fp7-cosma.eu/ and a final dissemination event was organized in Brussels as a public workshop.
During the project more than 20 scientific papers for conferences (e.g. AERONAUTIC DAYS, INTER-NOISE, EURONOISE, ICSV, ISMA, ANERS) and journals were published, two invited lectures were given (van Karman Lecture Series/Belgium & Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil/Chile).
List of Websites:
http://www.fp7-cosma.eu.
For contact use coordinator's information
Dr. Michael Bauer, EADS DEUTSCHLAND GMBH (michael.bauer@eads.net)
Or contact beneficiary BME, who is hosting the website (Mr. Ferenc Márki, marki@hit.bme.hu).
SEFA (FP6 project 2004-2007) was the first & unique approach to apply sound engineering practices on aircraft (a/c) exterior noise, i.e. not just lowering levels but also by improving the a/c noise characteristics & signatures. Synthesized a/c target sounds were generated and validated by laboratory listening tests single flyover events have been evaluated and rated with respect to their preference and possible design criteria for a/c have been identified to achieve those sounds. As SEFA was restricted to a preference scaling & single flyovers, COSMA should now follow the next step, i.e. design of a/c and its operations for a minimum of annoyance in airport communities. COSMA would significantly progress beyond the state-of-the-art in terms of a/c noise engineering.
Since a couple of years there is a growing demand for the understanding of the effects of a/c noise in the airport surrounding community. Meanwhile the aim is to develop techniques that are required for the description of the impact of a/c noise around airports. One of the most ambitious goals is the development of engineering guidelines and methods for the implementation of suitable design and operating practices. Those developments will help to minimize community a/c noise annoyance in the future. But this can only be achieved if capable and validated tools are available. One of COSMA’s central aim was to provide a set of powerful tools, which combine the acoustical understanding of a/c engineering on noise source basis, with the factors that determine the characteristics of a community friendly a/c and operations, which enable a long term innovative and complementary way to minimize the annoyance on communities around airports. The success of COSMA was directly associated with the availability and effectiveness of this tool set at the end of the project.
COSMA, a project funded by EC contract ACP8-GA-2009-234118 within the Framework 7, was established by five technical work packages
• WP1 - Specifications, assessment and exploitation
• WP2 - Annoyance examinations
• WP3 - Sound engineering
• WP4 - Virtual resident
• WP5 - Optimization of airport noise scenarios.
While in WP3 and WP4 the tool set had to be developed and validated, WP2 has been targeting the noise annoyance studies that will be used to describe the factors, which are relevant as input data for the Virtual Resident tool (VRes) design in WP4. Finally, WP5 has provided the optimization for pre-selected airport scenarios, including single and multiple events for take-off and landing.
After a total run time of 46 months (originally planned were 36 months), the project has been a successful collaboration among the a/c noise engineers, sound designers and the noise effects experts, to ensure the that the work on noise effects was clearly targeted to improve a/c design and operation, by combining 3 different scientific and engineering domains:
• The noise annoyance & psychometrics domain,
• The sound engineering domain,
• The a/c noise engineering domain.
All three domains together have been defining this innovative and collaborative approach in order to reduce perceived noise annoyance by 50 % by 2020.
Under the technical guidance of industry experts, COSMA integrated contributions from research organisations and SME’s, with complementary expertise in psycho-acoustics, health effects, sound design techniques, airport and a/c noise engineering, bringing together the multi-disciplinary background that was required for achieving the objectives. 21 beneficiaries have been involved from 9 different countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and UK. The budget of the project added up to slightly below 6,000,000 Euro, with an average funding rate of about 69 %. The overall effort totalled 500 person months. COSMA is associated with the X-NOISE network.
A panel of external experts accompanied the project, performing project assessments after 18 months and at the Final Meeting.
Project Context and Objectives:
Major airports across Europe reached their noise capacity before using the runway and terminal infrastructure fully. Others struggle to gain approval for further development as a result of the noise implications of future traffic growth, despite the proven demand for air travel that exists in the regions they serve. This has resulted in a strong increase of local airport noise restrictions.
To establish the context, the noise benefits from a strong trend in the implementation noise abatement procedures have to be distinguished from other limiting measures. For local purposes, these restrictions do address the noise disturbance issue by using a series of measures, not necessarily consistent from region to region and somewhat difficult to reconcile for the manufacturers to transfer into design criteria.
A/c noise disturbance involves in fact a complex interaction of a number of physical, biological, psychological and sociological processes. The relevant physical factors are associated with noise generation, e.g. the a/c type, mode of operation, pattern of operations at airport level and the resulting noise level. The other components are human factors, which include basic biological systems of audition, followed by psychological processes that interpret these signals, and can include health status, annoyance and stress.
The further interpretation of noise disturbance can be subjected to sociological conditioning that may include factors such as socio-economic status, cultural and lifestyle differences. Finally, although individuals may complain about the 'noise’ of a/c a variety of other factors such as fear of air accidents or disturbance from other airport activities can be the underlying cause of annoyance, and each type of annoyance does exhibit different characteristics and certainly different absolute noise levels. In particular complementary factors were addressed, e.g. impact of flight trajectory, impact of separation time between operations & influence of number of operations, to establish the conditions of effective Sound Engineering Design within the frame of an airport operational context. A comprehensive work plan was created to achieve the main objectives:
• Improve the understanding of the effects of a/c noise in the airport surrounding community.
• Develop techniques for modelling the impact of a/c noise around airports.
• Develop engineering guidelines and methods implementing suitable design and operating practices aimed at minimising community a/c noise annoyance, supported by a set of validated tools.
• Establish the ANIKBEM data base.
The first two objectives provided the required knowledge and capabilities which in the end were necessary to achieve the overall project objectives.
The expectations in COSMA’s progress vs. the state-of-the-art are summarized in the following innovations:
• The project concept and objective to design a/c and their operations for a minimum of annoyance in the surrounding airport community
• Field annoyance examinations providing acute (functional?) annoyance correlated with the real time signal and sound file for each polluting a/c
• Laboratory annoyance examinations with synthesized a/c sounds, which allow the validation of optimized operations for future airport scenarios and future a/c designs
• The Airport Community Sound Engineering tool (AComSE), including the AIRPORT NOISE CLIMATE SYNTHESIZER as a powerful sound synthesis tool that is able to synthesize airport noise scenarios for any location in an airport community and the SOUND SYNTHESIS MACHINE which allows an interactive optimization of single event sound quality for the whole flyover event
• The VRes tool allowing a reliable assessment of annoyance of residents in the vicinity of airports and the prediction of annoyance due to future airport scenarios
• The ANIKBEM aimed at further developing and managing knowledge in the field to ensure design practices and scientific information are being kept up to date.
Project Results:
In WP1 power plant & a/c definitions have been provided to define the configurations of 3 a/c for current and future scenarios. A literature review was performed, lists & ranks of moderator variables affecting annoyance and sleep disturbance near airports, based on available literature were established and recommendations were given to WP2. The Aviation Noise Impact Knowledge Base and Exchange Mechanism (ANIKBEM) got specified. A demonstrator was implemented, using support from COSMA public website & X-NOISE public and secure websites. It will be maintained and further developed by X-NOISE beyond COSMA’s end.
Annoyance studies were done in WP2. Telephone & field studies at 3 different European airports were performed. An extended analysis of previous data of the Frankfurt study 2005 FRA-S showed important acoustical & non-acoustical factors for the prediction of long-term and short-term (hourly) a/c noise annoyance, which could be (1) considered in the methodology for the telephone and field studies and (2) served as a first database input for the Virtual Resident (VRes) development. One possibility to reduce annoyance near airports is to improve sound quality of future a/c flyovers. Using the Sound Synthesis Machine (SSM) subjects were able to create their preferred sounds for different a/c. These improved “future” a/c sounds, so-called target sounds, were examined in three comprehensive living-room atmosphere laboratory studies to show the potential for annoyance reduction.
The outcomes of WP3 are a dedicated sound engineering tool which was developed to allow a sound quality accurate synthesis and analysis of a/c flyover noise events in airport communities. The tool is composed of two components: (1) On-line SSM tool for interactive sound quality analysis of single a/c flyovers and (2) AIRPORT NOISE CLIMATE SYNTHESIZER (ANCS) producing multiple event sound sequences in real airport scenarios based on source component data and noise propagation models. Beside this work several airport scenarios were synthesized, based on WP5 engineering guidelines for a/c designs and operations.
In WP4 the VRes tool was developed to simulate human subjective perception of a/c noise. The tool can predict human response to (1) single a/c sounds, (2) hourly a/c noise exposure and (3) the long-term annoyance. Three kinds of data came from the field studies: long-term annoyance by telephone interviews & computed acoustical data, hourly-annoyance by SPL measurements and hourly based participants’ ratings and single flyover sound preference by noise recordings, again rated. The single used core algorithm needs different pre-processing to bring the different kinds of data into the same format and a very strong data reduction was needed. After building & fine tuning, the VRes was extensively tested. The accuracy of the models is reasonably, the correlation between predictions & actual ratings is ~0.7-0.8 for all kinds of used data.
WP5 was more strictly related to the aeronautical engineering domain. Two main functions, deeply interconnected with all WP, can be identified: (1) Support of all WP by providing technical information & data. (2) Give engineering recommendations, design directions, operational constraints to achieve community friendly aviation systems. Technical achievements are: (1) A database of 2D noise optimized procedures, incl. noise spectra at specified positions on the ground and a database of optimized sequences of take-off and landing events, optimized with respect to objectives related to the a/c involved (number/type). (2) A tool for the sequence generation of sound files from recordings/simulations. (3) A large database of multi-objective, multidisciplinary optimizations of 3D procedures, including complete sets of a/c settings to be used for synthesis of sound files. (4) A database of spectra to describe low noise technologies on the most energetic a/c noise sources, taking into account novel engine installation.
Potential Impact:
COSMA’s technical scope & work plan have aimed to address the ACARE goals and priorities and had the ambitious objective of consolidating the relationship between the technology optimization process and how the a/c sound is perceived. The break-through approach, firmed up in COSMA through the added operational dimension, should allow the European Aerospace industries:
• To design low annoyance a/c able to meet society’s needs for more environmentally friendly air transport
• To win & foster the global leadership for European aeronautics.
The project has been focused on addressing a widespread European issue considered as an environmental priority and required then a European approach for a maximum impact. Furthermore, the following aspects ought to be emphasized:
• The need to take advantage of the significant EC research effort aimed at noise reduction (Technology and NAPs)
• The need to address noise sensitivity from an extended geographic perspective while regrouping the best expertise.
By its content, the project has been focusing on investigating annoyance factors that were not encompassed in current noise descriptors. It was then anticipated that the knowledge developed in COSMA would be put to good use in supporting EU interests and positions in such discussions. The capability to format specific results of the project following ad hoc requests from regulatory bodies was built in the project’s overall exploitation policy.
From a point of view strictly related to the aeronautical engineering, COSMA represents the first attempt to establish a consistent approach to introduce the sound quality and the community acceptance among the design constraints and procedural requirements. Undoubtedly, the complexity of the technical, physiological, societal, and cultural phenomena involved makes the availability of a reliable design tool a goal that still requires a substantial amount of work. Nevertheless, the results achieved so far, and the knowledge matured during COSMA reveal that this is a path that deserves to be followed. One of the potential consequences of such an approach (and not a secondary one) is represented by the attractiveness of the project outside the technical engineering community. Indeed, the feedback received after some of the dissemination activities completed has demonstrated that the COSMA approach, which focuses the attention on people rather than on machines, catches the interest of the civil society much more than the classical technology-based assessment of the environment friendliness of the commercial aviation.
Regarding the dissemination final recommendations were made to favor further exploitation of the project’s achievements. They include the organization of legacy archives, covering key results & core data as well as proposals for a dedicated annoyance workshop, co-located at the INTER-NOISE 2013 and supported by X-Noise
The activity related to the Aviation Noise Impact Knowledge Base and Exchange Mechanism (ANIKBEM) was given time to better formulate the concept and associated issues. First a specification document was produced to provide preliminary requirements from the systems aspects and a demonstrator has been implemented in practice using support from the COSMA Public Website as well as the X-NOISE Public and Secure Websites, thanks to the features described in the previous section. The demonstrator will be maintained and further developed by X-NOISE after the end of the COSMA project.
A dedicated COSMA public website is accessible under http://fp7-cosma.eu/ and a final dissemination event was organized in Brussels as a public workshop.
During the project more than 20 scientific papers for conferences (e.g. AERONAUTIC DAYS, INTER-NOISE, EURONOISE, ICSV, ISMA, ANERS) and journals were published, two invited lectures were given (van Karman Lecture Series/Belgium & Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil/Chile).
List of Websites:
http://www.fp7-cosma.eu.
For contact use coordinator's information
Dr. Michael Bauer, EADS DEUTSCHLAND GMBH (michael.bauer@eads.net)
Or contact beneficiary BME, who is hosting the website (Mr. Ferenc Márki, marki@hit.bme.hu).
