COSMA – Community Oriented Solutions to Minimise Aircraft noise Annoyance
COSMA is a European project funded by the Seventh Framework Program. It involves 22 partners from research and industry coming from 10 European countries.
What are the objectives of COSMA?
First, COSMA aims to improve the understanding of the effects of aircraft noise in the surrounding community. Based on that, the project aspires to develop techniques for modeling the impact of aircraft noise around airports. And finally – as an ultimate goal – COSMA targets the development of engineering guidelines and methods implementing suitable design and operating practices aimed at minimizing community aircraft noise annoyance.
Why is COSMA so important?
There have been many aircraft noise annoyance studies carried out in the past, but a research update is required because of new developments not been addressed in prior research: Aircraft have been getting quieter, while the number of aircraft noise events has been increasing. The pattern of aircraft noise exposure around most airports is now significantly different from 20-30 years ago when the majority of previous studies were carried out. The character of sound produced by modern aircraft types has changed significantly, too. Aside from that, technology only now exists for producing realistic simulations of future aircraft sounds that can be used in laboratory examinations.
What is the task of DLR in COSMA?
As leader of COSMA Work Package 2 (Annoyance Examinations) the Department of Flightphysiology of the DLR is responsible for the coordination of a telephone and field study, a laboratory study and an interactive Sound Synthesis Machine study conducted by the member institutes of WP2. Moreover, the department of Flightphysiology itself plans, conducts and analyses (parts of) these studies.
Telephone and field studies
The telephone and field studies aim to provide the status of annoyance of current airport scenarios and the determination of its causality. The studies are performed simultaneously at London Heathrow, Cologne/Bonn and Stockholm Arlanda Airport. More than 1200 telephone interviews are made around each airport, being followed by a four-day field study of annoyance examinations at 50 different residents' homes. Sound pressure level is measured continuously at each resident's home.
Laboratory Study
The laboratory studies are required for the evaluation of optimized future airport noise scenarios vs. current airport noise scenarios as they allow the variation of the acoustic stimuli while keeping other environmental factors constant. Participants will be exposed to different air traffic scenarios while performing various "like at home" activities (e.g. concentrating, reading a magazine etc.).
Interactive Sound Synthesis Machine study
For synthesizing future aircraft sounds for the laboratory examinations specifications for how the sound quality of future aircraft sounds can most likely be optimized are needed. With the Sound Synthesis Machine study, subjects are able to hear and modify selected aircraft noise features within defined technical constraints. The objective is to produce subjectively optimised target sounds that can be realised technically.
Period: 2009-06-01 – 2013-03-31
Official project website: http://fp7-cosma.eu/