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• Understanding aviation noise
• Improving impact management
• Understanding spatial variations

Much of the assessment of noise impact starts with a static image of the noise affected area. In other words, individual residences are seen to be representative of the people living in them. This means that when we state that a thousand people live within a noise contour of 55 L_den, what we really mean is that the residences in which thousand people live are situated within the 55 L_den noise contour. But people are not like houses, they move about during the day and undertake a range of different activities, all of which will influence the sound to which they are exposed and their perception of it. This human dimension of the sound environment has long been recognised by ‘soundscape’ research; but to date has had little influence on the way in which aircraft noise exposure is presented and its impacts assessed.

The novel approaches to informing land-use planning interventions to mitigate aircraft noise exposure undertaken as part of ANIMA sought to address this omission by providing insights into the way in which people move about between locations near airports, the activities they undertake and how communication can influence the perception of sound and thus the extent to which individuals are negatively impacted by it.

The development of dynamic population maps highlights the extent to which populations move away from and into aircraft noise exposed areas during the day to reveal the extent to which individual and population exposure can be influenced by movement and thus the potential consequences for responses such as annoyance.

The AnimApp allowed the recording of participants’ location, activity, mood and acoustic environment along with the momentary perception of the general and sound environment. This enabled us to explore statistical links between these features and suggest the extent to which lived experience can influence sound perception and thus responses such as annoyance and overall quality of life.

Studies on social media and house prices in locations near airports enabled us to investigate the influence of perceived negative impacts (house price reduction) and social networks on the perception of airports and thus attitudes towards the source of noise and ultimately human responses to it.

Overview these studies reveal a complex web of influences on the human response to sound exposure, which if better understood could inform more effective noise management interventions by airports.