On January 17, 2024, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center and Federal Aviation Administration held the fourth discussion of a seven-part thought leadership series titled Environmentally Responsible Advanced Air Mobility. The discussion focused on the work of FAA and the U.S. DOT Volpe Center to understand the environmental impacts and community concerns around Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and the steps being taken to address them and facilitate the smooth integration of AAM into the National Airspace System (NAS).

U.S. DOT Volpe Center Director Anne D. Aylward opened the session by welcoming guests and introducing speakers, including Julie Marks, Acting Executive Director of the Office of Environment and Energy (AEE) at FAA; Stephen A. Rizzi, PhD, Senior Researcher for Aeroacoustics at the NASA Langley Research Center; and Christopher Roof, Chief of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center.

Reducing the Impacts of Aviation

FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy works to reduce the environmental impacts of global aviation through research, technological innovation, policy, and community outreach. AEE is comprised of aviation professionals who develop, recommend, and coordinate national and international standards, policy and guidance, research and studies, and analytical expertise to solve aviation-related issues.

Julie Marks, Acting Executive Director of FAA’s Office of Environment and Energy spoke about the mission of her team as U.S. DOT prepares to integrate AAM into the NAS. “As we prepare for new entrants such as AAM aircraft, we must understand their environmental impacts and community concerns and take steps to minimize and address them,” she remarked.

Marks referenced FAA’s Innovate28 initiative, a joint government and industry plan that will integrate AAM operations at one or more key locations in the U.S. by 2028. FAA will develop and process all certifications, policies and procedures, rulemakings, and regulatory activities to ensure safe AAM flight operations, and will collaborate with aviation partners to make this plan a reality.

Marks touched on the shared responsibility of FAA and stakeholders for AAM to be successful. “However, while the FAA can have an important role in facilitating environmentally responsible AAM operations, other stakeholders have important roles as well, e.g., NASA, aircraft manufacturers, AAM vehicle operators, the vertiport operators, and importantly—both state/local/tribal entities and the communities themselves,” she said.

Environmentally Responsible Integration of AAM

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center has collaborated with FAA on numerous projects for decades and has provided technical expertise in the areas of alternative fuels, air traffic management systems, navigation and surveillance, and aircraft noise measurement and modeling. As FAA looks to launch AAM in the coming years, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center will provide expertise in the areas of noise certification of AAM vehicles, noise modeling to support environmental reviews, and guidance on the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).

Christopher Roof, Chief of the Environmental Measurement and Modeling Division at the U.S. DOT Volpe Center, provided some historical background on the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s key support to FAA in these areas and touched on the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s noise modeling and certification work. “ Noise certification has been around for many years with a lot of engagement from our traditional commercial aviation manufacturers—the Boeings and the Airbuses of the world—as well as the smaller aircraft manufacturers,” Roof said. “There are separate processes for both fixed-wing and rotorcraft. These include the instrumentation used, the analysis techniques, even the metrics that are ultimately developed,” he continued.

The U.S. DOT Volpe Center team employed specific noise modeling techniques and analyses for the AAM industry. Roof remarked, “We conducted an audibility or d-Prime analysis using the advanced acoustic model. We leveraged multiple ambient environments directly from the U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics National Noise Map.” Through the analysis and model work, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center team was able to provide improved metrics to the AAM industry. “Additionally, we provided noise model improvements to the advanced acoustics model directly to the industry. They came to us for greater fidelity in the frequency domain,” Roof concluded.

NASA Develops Prediction Models to Reduce Aircraft Noise

Steven Rizzi, PhD, Senior Researcher for Aeroacoustics at NASA’s Langley Research Center leads a diverse team that is focused on developing innovative tools and methods for perception influence and acoustic design of air vehicles with application to many of NASA’s research programs. In his presentation, Rizzi highlighted some of software tools developed by NASA to analyze noise levels of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles. “To assess community noise impact, you first have to know something about the source, and there are a couple of ways to determine that, through acoustic flight tests and another through predictions,” Rizzi remarked.

NASA has been working with eVTOL manufacturers to measure the acoustic profile of specific aircraft. The data gathered from these tests will be used to develop design tools manufacturers can use to reduce noise impacts of eVTOLs. Rizzi closed his talk by recapping NASA’s work to develop innovative software prediction tools to assess aircraft noise and the steps being taken to help eVTOL makers reduce community noise impacts. “To summarize, a NASA prediction toolchain has been developed and validated, and improvements continue to be made in that. With these tools, NASA is in a good position to assist stakeholders reduce UAM community noise impacts by helping to reduce noise at the source by providing tools to support land-use planning and environmental analyses, and by identifying noise abatement procedures—three elements of the ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organization] balanced approach,” Rizzi concluded.

View the event recording for the full discussion.

Up Next

The next event in the series, Considerations for Equity in Advanced Air Mobility, will take place on Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at 1:00 p.m. ET. This session will be hosted by U.S. DOT Volpe Center Director Anne Aylward and feature Yolanka Wulff, Executive Director and Co-founder of the Community Air Mobility Initiative (CAMI) and member of the FAA AAM Advisory Committee, and Okeoma Moronu, Head of Global Aviation Regulatory Affairs for Zipline International.

*The views of the speakers may not represent the views of U.S. DOT.

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