Who’s expected to benefit

Research suggests that over a million people live in communities, which are directly affected by aviation noise. ANIMA project is seeking to directly improve the lives of these people whilst also supporting policy makers, researchers and airport managers in making better decisions, which balance economic and regulatory requirements to achieve the best outcomes for all stakeholders.

ANIMA seeks to improve the lives of people directly affected by aviation noise around Europe’s major airports.

Communities living around airports

Community living around airports are the primary targets of ANIMA. They are obviously enduring the noise impact and reducing noise must keep on being a focus of the aviation policies led at various levels. Surveys show that for similar levels of noise, some communities around airports are complaining and some are not. Thus, we do know that beyond the noise, non-acoustical factors are strongly affecting the capacity of communities to tolerate or to compensate for annoyance. Analysing, disseminating and implementing mechanisms and measures that are actually allowing communities to accept reasonable levels of noise through engagement and/or compensation is the first objective of ANIMA.

Airport managers and local authorities

Airport managers and local authorities are often facing opposite incentives – they must enforce stringent regulations to ensure the lowest levels of nuisance to their neighbourhood, including noise while being urged and usually keen to develop the local economy through air traffic growth. Various bodies – especially the ICAO – enacted balanced approaches to harmonise these diverging requirements. However, some airports are more successful than others in implementing efficient practices to mitigate the annoyance. Through reviewing and exemplifying existing practices, ANIMA will help to identify and spread the best practices to a wide set of European airports, taking into account their particularities.Airport managers and local authorities are often facing opposite incentives – they must enforce stringent regulations to ensure the lowest levels of nuisance to their neighbourhood, including noise while being urged and usually keen to develop the local economy through air traffic growth. Various bodies – especially the ICAO – enacted balanced approaches to harmonise these diverging requirements. However, some airports are more successful than others in implementing efficient practices to mitigate the annoyance. Through reviewing and exemplifying existing practices, ANIMA will help to identify and spread the best practices to a wide set of European airports, taking into account their particularities.

Researchers and the European aircraft industry

Important European and national research programmes have already led to significant aviation noise reduction. Though, the traffic growth and increased sensitivity to noise and other environmental concerns made these signs of progress mostly unnoticeable for neighbouring communities, especially in Europe. Moreover, technological limitations and some regulations effects are likely to curb further progress on noise reduction. In this context, we strongly believe that ANIMA – through its very multidisciplinary approach – will significantly increase the research efficiency. By connecting annoyance factors to design processes, we aim to give the tools to engineers and operational planners, which will allow them to design aircraft and to imagine traffic patterns that would decrease annoyance. This way, ANIMA will help to make the link between technological developments and environmental concerns.

European policymakers

European policy-makers and decisional bodies are eager to achieve a better outlook and planning of forthcoming progress on community noise and to strengthen a vibrant European research network for reinforcing the efficiency of associated research. ANIMA is exactly fulfilling this mission by gathering a critical mass of researchers, by providing and maintaining sound roadmaps on aircraft noise and by proposing further developments.