Everyone encounters sound every day. It is only when that sound causes an adverse effect on a listener, such as annoyance, does that sound become noise. And noise is not always just about how loud the sound is, there is a complex set of factors that drive annoyance both based upon the noise itself and what that noise means to us. You can find out more in the following video:
To understand the noise impact on the local community the airport has a number of fixed or temporary noise monitors deployed in the local area, generally under or near flight paths. The monitors detect and send the noise levels, every second 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to a central system.
A ‘noise event’ is created when the monitor detects noise exceeding the background or local noise level for an appreciable amount of time. This could be due to any number of factors, be it local birds, cars or an aircraft. By continuously monitoring the noise level and integrating data from Air Traffic Control (ATC) our systems can determine if the noise event was generated by an aircraft, or another source.
The data collected by the monitors is presented in the following dashboard, which you can access and use by initially selecting a monitoring location in the top left. This will update all of the data for that monitoring location and will display the number of arrivals and departures detected at that location shown at the top. Additional analytics available at the bottom showing:
- The location of the monitor,
- The breakdown of flights per hour and per day
- Detailed information on the collected noise data, including the distribution of peak noise events, if these were caused by arrivals or departures operating from specific runways and how these events were spread throughout the day.
The dashboard is automatically updated every month and you can access data from previous months using the drop-down.
