U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Neighborhood Environmental Survey: Noise Methodology

As part of the agency's broader noise research program, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has undertaken a multi-year research effort to quantify the impacts of aircraft noise exposure on communities around commercial service airports in the United States (U.S.). The overall goal of the study was to produce an updated and nationally representative civil aircraft dose-response curve; providing the relationship between annoyance and aircraft noise exposure around U.S. airport communities. To meet this goal, the FAA sponsored a research team to help design and conduct a national survey, known as the Neighborhood Environmental Survey (NES). A multi-stage and statistically rigorous process was used to select a representative sample of US airports, including a balanced sampling frame that included six factors: geographic distribution, temperature, day-night split, operational tempo, fleet mis, and population density. The research team computed Day-Night Average Sound Levels (DNL) for the 20 airports in two waves: first for survey respondent selection, and then for pairing with respondent locations to create the dose response curve. Analysis of the responses and the associated DNL was used to generate dose-response curves for each individual airport and a national dose-response curve showing the percent "Highly Annoyed" for a given noise level. The National dose-response curve created from the mail questionnaire shows considerably more people are highly annoyed by aircraft noise at a given noise exposure level compared to historical FICON data. This paper presents the airport selection and noise modeling process used to support the creation of the National dose-response curve. Additional information describing the motivation to conduct the NES and how its findings will help inform ongoing work to address aircraft noise concerns; and the survey methodology are provided in companion papers.