New Tools Support Integrated Assessment of Aviation Environmental Effects
In its December 2004 Report to Congress on "Aviation and the Environment," the FAA recommended that "The Nation should develop more effective metrics and tools to assess and communicate aviation's environmental effects. The tools should enable integrated environmental and economic cost/benefit analysis ...". A major part of responding to this mandate is the development of a comprehensive suite of software tools that will allow for a thorough integrated assessment of the environmental affects of aviation and improved estimates of fuel burn. Launched in 2005, the FAA began a multiyear effort, which will result in the development of an entirely new suite of tools, including the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT). The public release of AEDT is slated for 2011.
The Volpe Center leads the management, design, development and integration of AEDT, which will replace existing aviation noise, emissions, and pollutant dispersion computer-modeling tools of the FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy. AEDT is capable of providing comprehensive environmental analysis of the aviation system as well as estimates of tradeoffs and interdependencies associated with technical, operational and policy options designed to reduce aviation environmental impacts. The tool is currently being used to support environmental analyses for the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and ICAO's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP). Upon release, it is planned that AEDT will be the centerpiece of an unprecedented broader suite of environmental consequence and cost benefit tools to be used to support the development of NextGen and associated U.S. environmental policy changes.
The Volpe Center developed a new method to compute fuel burn for Boeing aircraft, using the Boeing Climb-Out Program. This method improves fuel-burn modeling in the terminal area compared with actual airline-reported fuel-burn data. Work has begun to expand the aircraft fleet coverage of the database and implement the new terminal area fuelburn method into AEDT for use in FAA, NextGen, Atlantic Interoperability Initiative to Reduce Emissions, and CAEP analyses.
The FAA has set the goal of identifying and analyzing uncertainties of source-data algorithms and assumptions for each core computational AEDT module, including Aircraft Acoustics, Aircraft Emissions, Aircraft Performance, Ground Emissions, and Fleet and Operations. The process used in the first round of assessment will serve as a template for future module-level assessments, with the ultimate goal of evaluating the entire integrated system.
Global CO
2 Emissions from commercial aviation. (
Volpe Center image)
