Aviation is an important contributor to the global economy, satisfying society’s mobility needs. It contributes to climate change through CO₂ and non-CO₂ effects, including contrail-cirrus and ozone formation. There is currently significant interest in policies, regulations and research aiming to reduce aviation’s climate impact. Here we model the effect of these measures on global warming and perform a bottom-up analysis of potential technical improvements, challenging the assumptions of the targets for the sector with a number of scenarios up to 2100. We show that although the emissions targets for aviation are in line with the overall goals of the Paris Agreement, there is a high likelihood that the climate impact of aviation will not meet these goals. Our assessment includes feasible technological advancements and the availability of sustainable aviation fuels. This conclusion is robust for several COVID-19 recovery scenarios, including changes in travel behaviour.

Research suggests that non-acoustic factors can have a considerable effect on community attitudes and opinions towards aviation noise and that these can be influenced through processes of communication and engagement. This paper reviews literature from various fields to identify the key elements of effective practice, using them as a lens through which to assess case study noise management actions conducted at European airports. This analysis found that communication and engagement holds significant potential for noise management, but that this remains largely unfulfilled due to such methods being used as an ancillary management activity, rather than as a powerful tool to aid in the design and delivery of noise management actions. A series of recommendations and research priorities are proposed that could shape the future of noise management, including potential changes to European policy that more explicitly advocate for communication and engagement as a noise management tool in its own right.

Annoyance and sleep disturbances due to aircraft noise represent a major burden of disease. They are considered as health effects as well as part of the causal pathway from exposure to long-term effects such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as mental disorders (e.g. depression). Both annoyance and sleep disturbance are not only determined by the noise exposure, but also to a considerable extent by non-acoustic factors. This chapter summarises the most relevant non-acoustic factors and briefly explains their mechanisms on annoyance and sleep as well as the potential to address these factors via intervention methods aiming at the reduction of adverse noise outcomes and an increase in the quality of life of airport residents. Here, the focus is on airport management measures that are considered to help improve the residents’ coping capacity. Findings from the ANIMA case studies with regard to main aspects of quality of life in airport residents around European airports are briefly reported and recommendations for a community-oriented airport management are derived.

Aircraft noise exposure is an environmental stressor and has been linked to various adverse health outcomes, such as annoyance, sleep disturbance, and cardiovascular diseases. Aircraft noise can trigger both psychological (annoyance and disturbance) and physiological stress responses (e.g. activation of the cardiovascular system and release of stress hormones). People are usually able to deal with this kind of stressor. However, a constant exposure to aircraft noise can cause a continuous state of stress. This in turn can constrain a person’s ability to regenerate and restore its resources to cope with the noise situation. As a consequence, the risk for certain negative health outcomes can be increased. Within the ANIMA project, literature reviews on the effects of aircraft noise on health outcomes have been performed. This chapter gives an overview of the relevant health outcomes affected by aircraft noise and summarises the results of different reviews and studies on these outcomes. Additionally, the underlying mechanisms of how noise impacts health are explained for daytime as well as night-time aircraft noise exposure (i.e. while sleeping). Further, the relevance of considering not only the general population, but vulnerable groups as well (such as children and elderly people) is described. Lastly, open questions for further studies are presented and discussed.

Annoyance is the most prevalent community response to environmental noise. Observational and experimental lab studies have shown that exposure to environmental noise leads to annoyance, sleep disturbance, daytime sleepiness, increased heart rate and increased blood pressure. However, previous literature is preliminary based on controlled settings or experimental design, raising the question of the generalizability and applicability in daily life scenarios. This study aimed to investigate two main research questions. First, what is the relationship between short-term annoyance and different amounts of nocturnal aircraft noise exposure in daily life? Second, what is the relationship between physiological parameters, including heart rate, number of awakenings, sleep efficiency, sleep duration and different amounts of nocturnal aircraft noise exposure in daily life? This study also aimed to explore the suitability of non-invasive commercially available activity trackers to measure physiological metrics in a scientific way. During this field study, participants were wearing Fitbit Charge 3 activity trackers recording heart rate and different sleep-derived metrics (e.g. deep sleep duration, sleep efficiency and awakenings). The used activity trackers were readily available, non-intrusive, relatively cheap and easy to use by the participants. Simultaneously, a logbook was used by the participants to track the subjective perception and situational context of air traffic noise exposure. The noise levels corresponding to the exposure of air traffic of each participant were calculated based on the location of the participant and the corresponding radar track using an aircraft noise monitoring system. We hypothesize that a higher amount of exposure to aircraft noise in real life will be associated with increased annoyance, increased rest heartrate, higher number of awakenings, decreased sleep efficiency and decreased deep sleep duration. Preliminary results on the interactions between aircraft noise exposure, perceived annoyance and physiological metrics suggest increased nocturnal aircraft noise exposure seems to negatively affect sleep efficiency and deep sleep duration.