Aviation is a critical part of the economy, providing for the movement of people and goods throughout the world, and enabling economic growth. With projected strong growth in aviation demand and a rising value being placed on environmental quality, there is a compelling need to address the environmental effects of air transportation. In parallel, the traditional aviation environmental modeling focus on only noise or emissions outputs presents a need to better consider noise, air quality, fuel burn, and greenhouse gas emissions interdependencies and their costs and benefits.
The Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Environment and Energy (FAA-AEE), in collaboration with Transport Canada and NASA, is developing a comprehensive suite of software tools to facilitate thorough consideration of aviation's environmental effects; this effort is known as the Aviation Environmental Tool Suite. The main goal of this effort is to develop a critically needed ability to characterize and quantify the interdependencies among aviation-related noise and emissions, impacts on health and welfare, and industry and consumer costs, under different policy, technology, operational, and market scenarios.
The primary components of the Tool Suite are depicted in the schematic below and described in the linked pages. The main functional components of the Tools Suite are as follows:
Aviation Environmental Tools Suite. Click on an individual box for more information.
For more information on the Aviation Environmental Tool Suite, visit the FAA's Environmental Tool Suite Web site.
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