The potential of mostly non-acoustic factors to reduce and better predict long-term aircraft noise annoyance - examples from three European airports assessed in telephone interviews and field studies - Results of the COSMA Study

Studies on aircraft noise around airports in the last 20 years in general show a higher percentage of highly annoyed residents for a given day-night average sound level DNL than can be derived from the current EU dose response relationship which is mainly based on numerous studies from the 1970s and 80s. In particular, these newer studies imply that there is not one curve which is valid for all kind of airports as well as that the percentage of DNL explaining variance in the annoyance ratings is decreasing and mostly non-acoustical factors become more and more important. One aim of the EU-project COSMA (Community Oriented Solutions to Minimize aircraft noise Annoyance) was to identify commonalities of the most important non-acoustic factors contributing to aircraft noise annoyance around three different important European airports (London Heathrow, Cologne/Bonn, Stockholm Arlanda) and therewith prepare further studies aiming at updating and more differentiating the current EU dose response relationship. Therefore around 1.200 residents were interviewed by telephone as well as 50 residents at each airport were supervised four consecutive days including continuous sound pressure level recordings and hourly annoyance ratings. The results show that working on other, mostly non-acoustic, influential factors possibly carry a higher potential to reduce aircraft noise annoyance in the medium term than acoustic factors are able to do due to long-term technical implementation times.