Air Pollution at Airport Areas: Magnitude of the Phenomenon and Measures to Mitigate It

Airport areas generate large amounts of air pollution due to the air and surface traffics. However, this issue is often addressed by just considering single contributions, i.e. either the emissions generated by rubber-tired vehicles traffic or aircraft’s. Obviously, the two contributions overlap and to understand the magnitude of the phenomenon it is important to calculate the emission package generated by each mode. For a given airport area, this raises three research questions: i) which is the major contributor between surface and air traffic?; ii) how big are these contributions? and iii) which can be the mitigation measures for the major contributor? In reply, two Italian case studies are considered. The first is a medium-size airport, as a case to estimate emissions generated both by surface vehicles and aircraft. Simulations stress that the contribution of the latter is not even comparable to that of the former, thus replying to the third research questions by studying four mitigation measures at take-off and landing at an another airport (as second case study), to decrease ground-operations’ emissions. The paper describes the methodology adopted and elaborates the results and implications of air operations at ground level in urban airports within local mobility policies.