The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the air traffic noise at the Hannover airport region

Estimates of Population Highly Annoyed from Transportation Noise in the United States: An Unfair Share of the Burden by Race and Ethnicity

Transportation is one of the most pervasive sources of community noise. In this study, we used a spatially-resolved model of transportation-related noise with established transportation noise exposure-response functions to estimate the population highly annoyed (HA) due to aviation, road, and railway traffic sources in the United States. Additionally, we employed the use of the Fair Share Ratio to assess race/ethnicity disparities in traffic noise exposures. Our results estimate that in 2020, 7.8 million (2.4%) individuals were highly annoyed by aviation noise, while 5.2 million (1.6%) and 7.9 million (2.4%) people were highly annoyed by rail and roadway noise, respectively, across the US. The Fair Share Ratio revealed that Non-Hispanic Asian, Black, NHPI, and Other, and Hispanic populations were disproportionally highly annoyed by transportation noise nationwide. Notably, Hispanic populations experienced the greatest share of high annoyance from aviation noise (1.69 times their population share). Non-Hispanic Black populations experienced the greatest share of high annoyance from railway noise (1.48 times their population share). Non-Hispanic Asian populations experienced the greatest share of high annoyance from roadway noise (1.51 times their population share). Analyses at the state and Urban Area levels further highlighted varying disparities in transportation noise exposure and annoyance across different race ethnicity groups, but still suggested that Non-Hispanic White populations were less annoyed by all sources of transportation noise compared to non-White populations. Our findings indicate widespread presence of transportation noise annoyance across the US and emphasize the need for targeted source-specific noise mitigation strategies and policies to minimize the disproportionate impact of transportation noise in the US.

Introduction to the Special Issue on COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global event affecting all aspects of human life and society, including acoustic aspects. In this Special Issue on COVID-19 and acoustics, we present 48 papers discussing the acoustical impacts of the pandemic and how we deal with it. The papers are divided into seven categories which include: physical masking and speech production, speech perception, noise, the underwater soundscape, the urban soundscape, pathogen transmissibility, and medical diagnosis.

COVID-19 pandemic and air transportation: Summary of Recent Research, Policy Consideration and Future Research Directions

The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered an unparalleled disruption to the aviation industry in the last century. Starting with an at-that-time inconceivable reduction in the number of flights from March 2020 to May 2020, the aviation industry has been trying to navigate through and out of the crisis. This process is accompanied with a significant number of scientific studies, reporting on the direct and indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on aviation and vice versa. This paper reviews the impacts in context of the recent literature. We have collected nearly 200 well-published papers on the subject in the years 2021/2022 and dissected them into a framework of eight categories, built around: airlines, airports, passengers, workforce, markets, contagion, sustainability, and economics. We highlight the essence of findings in the literature and derive a set of future research directions and policy considerations which we deem important on the way towards pandemic-resilient aviation.