Aircraft-noise induced awakenings as a more adequate indicator for better night noise protection concepts around airports

Abstract

Sleep disturbance is the main negative effect of nocturnal aircraft noise, known to increase the risks of adverse health effects and impair the quality of life. Protection zones for nocturnal aircraft noise are currently based mostly just on average sound levels. However, these physical measures usually correlate poorly with sleep quality. In order to develop a generalizable standard exposure-response model, within the EU-project ANIMA a re-analysis of the two worldwide available field studies using the gold standard polysomnography and simultaneous acoustical measures was carried out. Pooling of the data was performed to get a medium exposure-response curve based on the AIC. For a standard model, additional parameters should be considered, premised they do not significantly deplete the AIC. Exposure-response curves for the pooled and standard model will be presented and compared. Results provide valuable information on new night noise protection concepts, based on physiological measures. The application of the model in ANIMA’s Virtual Community tool, software to compute additional aircraft noise induced awakenings around airports, will also be presented.