This study introduces a logistic regression-based stress level metric to (1) assess stress levels of Air Traffic Controllers (ATC) and pilots, and (2) detect off-nominal events using audio-derived features. With over 16,264 labeled ATC-pilot utterances and scalar and multi-dimensional speech attributes, it is demonstrated that a developed Stress Score metric can capture meaningful distinctions between the nominal and off-nominal utterances. The Beta distribution fit further captures the skewed nature of Stress Scores, indicating that the model follows a non-linear but quantifiable pattern...
Air transport is a continually expanding industry, a fact that has become even more evident with the recovery of the aviation industry post-COVID-19. This expansion amplified energy consumption at airports, which was already significantly high. Airport decision-makers are increasingly focusing on improving sustainability and addressing social, economic, and environmental criteria across airports worldwide. In this article, we propose a decision-making model for identifying a sustainable airport technology solution that minimizes the energy consumption of airport lighting while considering...
This study examines air traffic separations in the service volumes of communication and surveillance facilities that experienced service outages. The data sample consists of 338 unscheduled service outages that happened in 2010 and 2011 at facilities located in the vicinity of 15 major traffic hubs. For each outage, radar track data were collected and used to calculate traffic separations during the period of 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after an outage. Then, the separation index, which indicates the percentage of horizontal separation retained between two aircraft at the same altitude...
Climate adaptation is inevitable to managing the climate risk of infrastructure systems and has become an emerging topic in the past decade. Despite the growing need for collaborative and multi-agency efforts in climate change adaptation, however, current airport and transportation governance structures reinforce siloed approaches to manage climate risk. Here we combine a novel coastal flooding exposure assessment of California’s airports and a policy review to address the importance of collaborative climate adaptation by viewing airport infrastructures as interconnected systems across...
Inadequate governance is considered a major barrier for implementing policy, particularly those concerning global and complex challenges such as climate change adaptation. Literature in adaptation policy point to the lack of methods that monitor and assess how decision-making takes place and by whom. Based on a review of over 200 policy documents, this article benchmarks for the first time, the current airport climate adaptation regime in the United States and applies a sociotechnical system framework to scrutinize institutional capacity to address climate change impacts. An innovative...
Following an increased interest in aviation decarbonization, electric aircraft - including conventional fixed-wing and electric Vertical Take-Off & Landing aircraft (eVTOLs) - are approaching certification. While several studies and eVTOL manufacturers claim noise pollution reduction near airports to be a significant benefit of replacing existing aircraft with electric aircraft, there is little research quantifying this suggested benefit. This study develops a method for quantifying noise footprint benefits of electric aviation at regional airports. The method is applied to Van Nuys...
