The benefits and environmental impacts of air transportation are highly interwoven products of a complex interaction of interdependent technological and operational systems, operating within policy constraints and evolving with market conditions. Today, environmental policy design, and research and development activities, are largely compartmentalized — focusing for example on only noise, only air quality, or only climate change. Further, the full costs and benefits are often not considered when evaluating policies and prioritizing research investments. This arrangement is incompatible with the engineering and organizational realities of the air transportation system. Decisions in one domain may produce unintended negative consequences in another. Restructuring the decision-making process to integrate consideration of all environmental impacts simultaneously, and to provide a full assessment of costs and benefits, can increase economic efficiency, reduce the potential for unintended consequences, establish new understanding of the interdependencies among effects, and improve stakeholder understanding to better interpret future issues.
Fostering these changes is the principal aim of Project 3. The overall objective of Project 3 is to enable better communication and decision-making in addressing the interdependent environmental effects of aviation by being able to fully assess the benefits and costs of interdependent policies, technologies, operational procedures, and market conditions.
REPORT TO CONGRESS: AVIATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT
In December 2003, as part of HR 2115 Vision 100-Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act, Congress required the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with NASA, to study reducing aircraft noise and emissions, and increase fuel efficiency. The study was conducted by PARTNER, the Partnership for AiR Transportation Noise and Emission Reduction.
Presented to Congress in March 2006, the report recommends that the United States should adopt a national aviation and environmental goal of reducing the significant impacts of aircraft noise and emissions on local communities by the year 2025, notwithstanding anticipated growth in movement of people and goods. The report says that by that date, uncertainties regarding both the contribution of aviation to climate change and the impacts of aviation particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants, will be reduced to levels that enable appropriate action. This action would mitigate restraints on air travel, commerce, and national security. Emphasizing the diversity of the reports’ contributors, the report “vision” says that “Through broad inclusion and sustained commitment among all stakeholders, the U.S. aerospace enterprise will be the global leader in researching, developing, and implementing technological, operational and policy initiatives that jointly address mobility and environmental needs.”
AVIATION ENVIRONMENTAL PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT TOOL
There is a need for analytical tools that can effectively assess interdependencies amongst emissions, and between noise and emissions, and that can effectively analyze the benefit-cost of proposed actions. To meet this need, the FAA initiated the development of a comprehensive suite of software tools. PARTNER is responsible for developing an element of this suite known as the Aviation Portfolio Managment Tool. APMT will provide a thorough appraisal of all aviation-related environmental effects and their direct economic costs to the aviation industry and consumers. APMT's objective is to provide comprehensive cost and benefit estimates of aviation environmental impacts, considering interdependencies, for a range of assumptions and stakeholder viewpoints. You can read more about APMT and its role in the Environmental Tool Suite on the FAA's Environmental Tool Suite FAQ page.
Supporting the International Civil Aviation Organization/Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection, the Joint Planning and Development Office, and FAA decision-making and research need identification by creating an integrated modeling tool (the Aviation Design, Valuation, and Inventory System for Environment) for assessing aviation's environmental impact.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of North Carolina
Ian Waitz, Professor, Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, iaw@mit.edu
Maryalice Locke maryalice.locke@faa.gov
Project 3 poster download (.pdf 420K)
Report to the United States Congress: Aviation and the Environment. Ian Waitz, Jessica Townsend, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Edward Greitzer, Jack Kerrebrock.
Download (.pdf 1.4M)
Architecture Study for the Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool. Ian Waitz, et al. June 2006. (Report No. PARTNER-COE-2006-002)
Download (.pdf 2.5M)
Prototype Work Plan for the Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool. Ian Waitz, et al. June 2006. (Report No. PARTNER-COE-2006-003)
Download (.pdf 852K)
Requirements Document for the Aviation Environmental Portfolio Management Tool. Ian Waitz, et al. June 2006. (Report No. PARTNER-COE-2006-001)
Download (.pdf 1.4M)
Reports presented at the ICAO Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection 7th Meeting, 5-16 February 2007, Montréal, Canada:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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