NAS-Wide Environmental Modeling of Alternative Airspace Concepts

Leveraging extensive experience from major airspace re-design projects, Metron develops a software system to model the NAS-wide environmental consequences of new airspace concepts. The NAS Environmental Impact Model (NASEIM) is innovative in the following ways:(1) It solves the NAS-wide data-integration problem; (2) It solves the data-transformation problem for new airspace concepts involving new procedures, aircraft, emissions characteristics, and airspace usage; and (3) It solves the computational-burden and scenario-comparison problems inherent in large-scale environmental modeling of new airspace concepts. This enables NASA to determine, early in concept development, which concepts may have either adverse or beneficial effects on the environment, particularly with regard to aircraft noise. This also enables NASA to determine which elements of the new airspace concepts are causing significant environmental impacts, and to modify the concepts to ameliorate the associated environmental impacts. Key features of the Metron approach include NAS-wide modeling of impacts (not just around airports), automated adherence to concept-specific flight profiles, and the ability to model proposed concept-specific changes in operational procedures, aircraft types, and levels of noise emission. This approach also provides integrated comparison of different scenarios, quantification and localization of impacts, and analysis of the causes of differences in impact across scenarios.