Risk assessment on airports - Kuopio workshop case study

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This page contains the risk assessment conducted as a case study in the Kuopio workshop. Before the workshop begins this page serves as a place to discuss how the case study should be done, e.g. the methodological approaches to be used, the tools to be used, the scoping of the case study, data availability etc.

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I suggest comments be put on the discussion page of this page and the outcomes of these discussions be then added on this page. The comments written so far on this page have been now moved to the discussion page (click the discussion tab on top of the window)Mikko 05:35, 2 March 2007 (EET)


Case study topic

Scope:
Following originally David's suggestion, we will be focusing on airports as the case, and Schiphol especially. A preliminary suggestion of the scoping is to concentrate on air pollution, noise, and road accidents. Airplanes, airport ground transportation and connecting road traffic are the emission sources. Airport related emissions near the airport (say, horizontally 10 km, vertically 1 km [or average boundary mixing layer]) will be considered, but not emissions from the air traffic as whole. Also the target geographic area or population for the risk assessment should be defined. The simplest solution is to target on the same 10 km radius (to be defined on a map). The airport isn't exactly a point source.

The possible policy scenarios include

  • time limitations of airport use (restirctions on night-time activity; noise)
  • air traffic restrictions, e.g. overseas only (air pollution + noise)
  • plane types/sizes (EU airplane noise restrictions already apply, otherwise only indirectly contriollable as a consequence of the previous)
  • more efficient flight profiles or a more optimised route network (these relate to between-airport issues, yes? We do not have data to deal with this)
  • and more advanced noise abatement arrival and departure procedures (we do not have data for this, either)


Please express your comments on this suggestion. Participants and all other interested, also please collect suitable data you have or can find in relation to this topic.

Framework

This is a draft of the framework that could be used for the airports case study. It includes tasks. Please send me (Anne) comments!!


Comments from Erik, and discussions based on the comments.

  • Overall policies are not acknowledged ⇤#1: : Policies are not yet part of this framework, since this captures the essence of the environmental health linkages. Policies can be applied to every variable and should be defined at a later stage in policy scenarios (defining the assessment) --Anne.knol 15:54, 13 March 2007 (EET)
  • Policy targets like concentration levels and odour limits are not acknowledged
  • If CO2 is omitted, this must be specifically justified. ⇤#1: : Everything that is omitted should be justified. For CO2, the justification is that we are looking at airports and not at airtraffic as a whole. --Anne.knol 15:54, 13 March 2007 (EET)
    • Airports cannot affect airplane CO2 emissions, but ground traffic can be managed.
      • A part of ground work vehicles can be electrified.
      • Railroad could be offered for feeding traffic (but in Schiphol, this is already as good as it can be).
  • Odours are not acknowledged.←#1: : They are now, with the arrow between Air pollution and Annoyance --Anne.knol 15:54, 13 March 2007 (EET)
  • Focus more on policy interventions (incremental) instead of overall benefit assessment. .←#1: : It is easier to compare different (policy) scenarios than determining the whole benefits of an airport --Alexandra Kuhn 07:02, 14 March 2007 (CET)
  • EU carbon emission policy could be included, althought the policy is not in the airport level. What would be the impacts of the new policy on the airport level?
  • Full chain approach does not work always. - We need an alternative or additional solution, if this is true.
    • Full chain approach works with closed systems. But when the system is open, there is a problem. Airport is a problematic case, as the system boundaries are very open (much of the relevant causalities occur outside the airport).←#1: : Part of the scoping? Why isn't this part of Intarese full chain? --Anne.knol 15:54, 13 March 2007 (EET)
    • O3 effects occur outside the 20 km area -should this be omitted? .←#1: : Not only O3 effects occur outside - also (secondary) PM effects are strong outside. --Alexandra Kuhn 07:05, 14 March 2007 (CET)⇤#(number): : PM effects are significant both inside and outside, O3 effects are in practice only outside 20 km radius --Mikko 14:00, 14 March 2007 (EET)
  • Most of the noise is from airplanes. Most of the air pollution comes from ground traffic. These could be assessed separately.

Variables are continous distributions. SHould you consider yes/no variables, like odour/no odour, or percieved noise effects (annoyance) separately from unperceived noise effects (sleep disturbance, cardiovascular effects).

  • Risk assessment is always a simplification. There are two criteria:
    • Gives plausible information about the connection
    • Makes it possible to evaluate the effects of marginal changes
  • Risk perception is more like an impact rather than ongoing process.←#1: : It has been added as an impact. However, taking account of risk perception should occur throughout the assessment process --Anne.knol 15:54, 13 March 2007 (EET)
    • A policy option can also affect risk perception directly.
  • Economic impacts of land price is omitted.
  • Climate change issues do not affect within 20 km, and is omitted.

Comments from Alex (14 March 2007 8:30 CET)

  • I would like to rename the two last categories: Impacts should be a synonyme for Health effects (acutally, the ExternE methodology uses it for Health effects and effects on materials, crops and ecosystems). I would then like to rename Impacts to "valuation".
  • Calculation of the costs depends also on the DALYs and YOLLs so an arrow from DALYs to Costs might be sensible. I would like to discuss this with you and especially with Anne.
  • I can give you no help on determining social benefits for the whole airport. We could instead compare different scenarios and express the avoided damage costs as benefits.
  • PM effects are high also outside of a 20 km circle.
  • Why did you not add a "respiratory morb/mort" als parent to costs? These are the important for air pollution.
  • SP 4 is developing a glossary and I have copied words from different glossaries into one file. I would like to use some time to talk this through with some of you and hope to be able to provide only one definition for one word before the SP 4 April meeting. Do you think this would be possible?


Excluded are:

Sources:

  • air traffic as a whole (what is ment by this? Air traffic outside of the 10 km rad 1 km x volunme?)
  • economic activities outside airport (hotels, storage, etc)

Releases/ exposures:

  • odour
  • climate change effects
  • water/soil pollution
  • indoor environment
  • loss of public space/ natural habitat
  • waste problems
  • occupational problems (eg people working at airport with chemicals, fires, etc)

Effects

  • accidents with airplanes
  • hearing impairments
  • transport of infectious diseases
  • possible effects related to releases mentioned above

Any actions/ policies!

Variables used in this case

Link to variables are listed here.

Variables

Necessary inputs/methods

Cross-cutting methods


Please have a look at Tools needed in Intarese toolbox for an overview of needed tools and guidance for Intarese Risk Assessment.

Data or literature

A few relevant studies that might supply valuable data (or insights) include the following:

Study on Current and Future Aircraft Noise Exposure at and around Community Airports [1]

Public Health Impact of Large Airports [2]

This report evaluates the public health impacts in airport operations systems encompassing the area up to a few tens of kilometres distance from the airport. (airports in general, not really one specific, not really by doing a real HIA or risk assessment; they primarily based their report on individual epidemiological studies and (systematic) reviews). They have considered the health impacts of several environmental factors on health separately:

  • Air pollution
  • Noise
  • Accidents
  • Soil and water pollution at the airport
  • Importation of infectious diseases
  • Occupational health risks at the airport

Effects of aviation on climate and thereby health and indirect positive and negative public health effects through economic mechanisms, transport possibilities and tourism are outside the scope of this report

They determine the possible associated health impacts by using the following classification scheme:

  • Evidence for a causal relationship between exposure and health effect (sufficient, limited or inadequate evidence or evidence for a lack of a causal relationship; following the IARC
  • Severity of effect (slight, moderate, severe)
  • Number of people affected (susceptible individuals, specific subgroups, substantial part of the exposed population)


  • Air pollution

They concluded that air pollution levels around large airports are similar to those in urbanised areas and are to a large extent determined by road traffic emissions. Sufficient causal relationships were identified for premature death, aggravation of respiratory and cardiovascular disorders after an episode (resulting in hospital admission), lung function, increase in chronic respiratory conditions due to chronic exposures and odour annoyance

  • Noise

Aircraft noise is one of the most important environmental factors of airport operations and is specific to the system. More specific noise from: Aircraft taking off and landing Aircraft braking and taxiing at the airport Aircraft engine testing

In the vicinity of an airport one will usually find residents where air traffic noise is a dominant source of environmental noise exposure. Sufficient causal relationships were identified for hearing impairments, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, annoyance, sleep disturbance and performance at school.

  • Accidents

The present report focused only on aircraft crashes. Accidents, such as fires may also occur. Terrorist actions have also been recognised as a serious threat associated with airports although they are out of scope in this report. For aircraft crashes, the landing and the takeoff stage are the most critical parts of the flight. In the past decades world-wide, on average, 50 crashes occurred per year, resulting in about 1500 fatalities per year. The primary victims are the crew and passengers. At present the crash frequency in the vicinity of a large airport is roughly one to two crashes per ten millions movements. This implies that a rough estimate of the average crash rate in the vicinity of a large airport is one to two per decade. The individual risk level for people living in the vicinity of an airport (being hit by a crashing aircraft) are very, very low.

  • Soil and water pollution at the airport

Leaking underground storage tanks and pipes, fuel spillages or leakage during ground handling of aircraft, washing of aircraft and vehicles and fire training are sources of water and soil pollution at airports. Effects on humans due to exposure to all these compounds appear to be unlikely.

  • Importation of infectious diseases

World-wide traffic increases the potential for transmission of infectious diseases from one county to another. An example is airport malaria.

  • Occupational health risks at the airport

Although activities within the airport do affect occupational health, the situation is not out of line with the situation in comparable industries.

They make a (very small) effort to integrate the findings. They mentioned that exposures (e.g. from air pollution, noise) can act in a cumulative way, that other factors (e.g. fear for accidents) can modify the impacts etcetera..



A project on relevant indicators for health impacts of airports has also been running, including tests on data availability around 3 airports (Malpensa, Heathrow and Schiphol). Follow-up study, however, has been cancelled. The report (under 'final report'), the case studies (under 'case-studies') and the list of indicators (also under 'case studies') is to be found at [3]

In this report, a set of environmental indicators have been derived that is thought to be useful in monitoring public health at large airports. This set is founded on a sound scientific basis. However, these indicators do not need a scientific base only, they have to be supported by the users, the local and national authorities and representative of the population living near an airport.

The airport is defined as an airport operation system which is an airport zone encompassing the airport of course, but also business developments, infrastructure and residents. Geographically this area is about a 20 km radius around the airport. The proposed set of indicators consists of health indicators, exposure indicators, and throughput indicators. Health indicators

Number of spontaneous complaints per year about noise and odour related to airport activities Number of people highly annoyed by air traffic noise stratified to age Prevalence of cardiovascular diseases in the 45-65 age group Prevalence of respiratory diseases in the 4-12 age group Number of people highly sleep annoyed by air traffic noise stratified to age

Emission / Exposure indicators

Fraction of population exposed to aircraft noise with Lden of <55, >55-60, >60 dB(A) Fraction of population exposed to aircraft noise with LAeq, 23-7h of <40, >40-50, >50 dB(A) Annual emissions of PM10 from air traffic, road traffic and other sources Mean annual concentration of PM10 Annual emissions of gaseous hydrocarbons from air traffic, road traffic and other sources Mean annual concentration of gaseous hydrocarbons Annual emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from air traffic, road traffic and other sources Mean annual concentration of NOx

Throughput indicators Arriving and departing aircraft per year (scheduled flights, chartered flights and ‘general’ aviation Arriving and departing aircraft per year during 23-7h (scheduled flights, chartered flights and ‘general’ aviation Number of arriving and departing passengers per year Number of transfer passengers per year Freight and mail loaded and unload per year Fraction of passengers going to and from the airport using public transport Area of the airport


Furthermore, for general discussion it would be useful to see (more detailed) what SP3 are planning to do in their case studies. They are currently drafting scoping reports. Some of these (or related information) are available at wiki:

I (Anne) will bring along some others to Finland.

Maybe some other interesting reports:

The project UNITE produced some nice reports about airports and aircrafts (check e.g appendix 9F and Annex A5) [4]

←1: : The appendix 9F, environmental marginal costs for air traffic, provides information about the monetary valuation of the air pollution (fuel burned in the air crafts and production of the fuel), effects to global warming and noise from the aircrafts (the last one not strongly covered). The emissions that are considered are the ones that happen in proximity of the airports, i.e. taxi-in, taxi-out, take off, climb out, and approach & landing. The environmental effects considered cover health effects to humans, damages to crops and damages to materials in man-made constructions. Dispersion modelling was made using EcoSense model. UNITE project has also produced similar kind of information on ground traffic, e.g. appendix 9A, which may be used if ground traffic becomes chosen to be considered extensively in our case study. --Mikko 09:00, 13 March 2007 (EET)

For airport Schiphol A statistical annual review is published every year for actual numbers. They also make a comparison with other European airports [5]

←1: : These statistical annual reviews from Schiphol airport from year 2000 to 2006 are mainly involved with air transport, passengers and cargo movements as individual numbers (monthly and annual totals) or as proportions (landings, take-offs e.g. per hr of d). Also information on Europe-scale as well as intercontinental origins and destinations. Information on average max take-off weights as well. Proportional cargo expressed as tonnes: this might be useful in some circumstances. Also: overall infrastructure so if we need runway lenghts and widths for further calculations on land-use issues, here they are. --Anna Karjalainen 20:11, 12 March 2007 (EET)


For the German Frankfurt-airport some (German) reports are available:


Determination and applications of environmental costs at different sized airports – aircraft noise and engine emissions [9]

  • The social costs of noise and aircraft engine emissions are calculated for Schiphol airport surroundings (among other airports).
  • Noise social cost: Hedonic price method (HPM) is used, which is based on the household equilibrium marginal willingness to pay. It extracts the implicit prices of certain characteristics that determine property values (location, attributes of the neighbourhood and community, environmental quality).

File:Noise social cost.PNG


  • Aircraft engine emissions (HC, CO, NOx, SO2, CO2, N2O): Environmental costs are calculated for individual aircraft movements applying the social cost unit for each pollutant. Annual cost is determined by summing across the annual aircraft movements and emission inventory. Landing, take-off, and 30-minute cruise stage prior to landing or after take-off are considered in the calculations.

File:Aircraft emission cost.PNG


Data for Schiphol:

  • Aircraft movement in 2001 (aircrafts categorised into 7 categories)
  • Number of residences within each noise contour zone in 2001
  • Unit social costs of pollutants (HC, CO, NOx, SO2, CO2, N2O) (€/kg). Unit costs are based on the relationship between pollution and damages on human health, vegetation, buildings, climate change and global warming.

Results for Schiphol:

  • Average and annual noise social cost (€/landing)
  • Average and annual emission cost (€/landing)

What do you mean by social costs? Are the external costs included or are these the internal costs only? Alexandra Kuhn 7:23, 14 March 2007 (CET)



One thorough review on exposure-response functions of noise (comprising mostly traffic noise and aviation) and health [10]


In this systematic review the exposure response relations in the field of noise and health are evaluated by the use of both epidemiological studies and other reviews. Only the relationships for which the evidence were sufficient and which were derived either by means of a quantitative summary of published data or a re-analysis of individual data based on primary studies (pooling), were selected.

Some possible references for airport risk study (23.2.2007):

http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780198526292 Book available from Kuopio university library

⇤1: : Very general book about health impact assessment. Maybe useful as a reference if we’re stuck, but not necessary reading material for the case study --Anne.knol 15:09, 12 March 2007 (EET)

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/01959255/2002/00000022/00000006/art00015 Article must be ordered through the library.

←1: : This article (called Assessing health consequences in an environmental impact assessment - The case of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, 2002) is very useful, as they ¨estimated quantitatively the impact of aircraft-related pollution in terms of the number of affected people for aircraft noise annoyance, odour annoyance and hypertension¨ and they also looked annoyance and risk perception. If it doesn’t overlap with the 1994 report, I could also get it through RIVM (probably quicker than through the library). --Anne.knol 15:09, 12 March 2007 (EET)

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:ZD5Kuhq8Ao8J:www.scan-uk.mmu.ac.uk/Topics/thirdparty.html+schiphol+risk+assessment&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1 7 References for airport risk assessment studies.

⇤1: : This page cannot be found, but probably linked to an overview of even more studies? --Anne.knol 15:09, 12 March 2007 (EET)

⇤1: : Deals about the individual and societal risk of being killed by a plane and about their acceptable risk limits. Not within the primary scope of our workshop (noise, air pollution)? Olli 15.50, 12 March 2007 (EET)

[11]

⇤1: : This paper summarizes the development of methods being used for risk assessment of Sciplhol airport: the experiences and practices of RA at Schiphol. Scenarios and models used in various RAs, related data needs, various steps in RAs, some legal and policy issues... Written in a descriptive way, so no actual numeric information available from here. --Anna Karjalainen 20:11, 12 March 2007 (EET)

←1: : Article concludes, that air pollution derived health risk from airports in adjancet communities is no higher than the risk from typical urban environment. --Virpi 09:30, 13 March 2007 (EET)

  • media:Staatsen airport 1994 raport.pdf
  • media:Viser airport 2005.pdf
    • Conclusion: The overall cancer incidence in the Schiphol area was similar to the national incidence. The moderately increased risk of hematological malignancies could not be explained by higher levels of ambient air pollution in the Schiphol area. This observation warrants further research, for example in a study with focus on substances in urban ambient air pollution, as similar findings were observed in Greater Amsterdam.
      ⇤1: : Hematological cancers are an unlikely disease to be caused by either air polluttion or noise. Therefore my conclusion is that the observed increases are probably just noise in the large group of analyses. Thus, this study produces no evidence of increased cancer near Schiphol. --Jouni 08:34, 13 March 2007 (EET)

Models

  • I (Alex) can bring a single source Ecosense model (old version; for use in the workshop only, not for distribution)
    • Input: emissions into the air of a single source (needed e.g. emissions per year, location...)
    • Calculations: dispersion on 50 * 50 km grid for Europe using the Windrose Trajectory Model (a very simple model); calculation of the health impacts (also crops) and calculation of the external costs caused by this.
  • Or if you would like to do the dispersion modelling with another model, I could bring factors for calculating the health impacts and the external costs. I would need delta concentration (background without airport - with airport) per grid cell and population in the same grid cells. I could use Excel to do the rest like it is done in Ecosense.


Suggested case study topics were removed, but they can be found from a previous version.

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