Evaluating aircraft ground operation noise in airport noise modeling and monitoring in Japan

The current Japanese noise guideline “Environment Quality Standard for Aircraft Noise” requires considering noise of aircraft ground operation, which we call ground noise here, like APU operation, taxiing, and engine run-up, if necessary. It has inevitably required us not only to take account of ground noise contributions in the Japanese airport noise model JCAB2, but also to include techniques to identify or discriminate ground noise from the ambient noise floor when fulfilling airport noise monitoring. Ground noise sometimes lasts very long and is usually low level compared with flyover noise. First, this paper makes a brief review of the way to evaluate ground noise in airport noise modeling and monitoring in Japan. Second, it discusses further issues to improve the reliability in the evaluation of ground noise under the influences of excess ground attenuation, meteorological condition, sound shielding by obstructions like building structures and embankment, as well as contamination by noise events.