Assessing aircraft noise-induced annoyance around a major German airport and its predictors via telephone survey - The COSMA study

Background: Despite technological improvements and noise mitigation schemes, annoyance due to aircraft noise remains an ongoing issue for residents near airports, and increasing annoyance has been observed in many affected communities. Objectives: This study investigates aircraft noise-induced annoyance near a German airport that is particularly busy at night. In addition to established predictors, it examines variables not considered in studies of recent years. Annoyance ratings are compared to the current European standard exposure-response curve and the community tolerance level (L-ct) is calculated as described in the 2016 revision of ISO 1996-1. Methods: A telephone survey was conducted with 1262 residents near Cologne/Bonn Airport (IATA: CGN, Germany) which can be classified as a low-rate change (LRC) airport. Acoustical (Ld(dn) in 5 dB-steps, flight altitude, and predominant type of operation) and non-acoustical variables (e.g., attitudes, noise sensitivity, urbanisation level of area) were recorded for every participant. Respondents assessed their aircraft noise-induced overall annoyance as well as their night-time annoyance using the verbal 5-point ICBEN scale. Results: The L-dn, explained 16.5% of variance in the annoyance ratings. The inclusion of non acoustical variables into the regression model increased the proportion of explained variance to 54.8%. Annoyance prevalence rates at CGN were higher than predicted by the EU-standard curve and the L-ct was lower than predicted by recent work. Conclusion: For a LRC airport, the community around CGN shows an uncommonly high percentage of highly annoyed residents and a low tolerance to aircraft noise exposure. Non-acoustical factors including personal and situational factors seem to have substantial impact on annoyance.