IMPACT
Based on an extensive reference-data warehouse, IMPACT is a secure web application that enables consistent trade-off analyses between fuel burn/emissions and noise. IMPACT includes a new aircraft trajectory calculator, which computes complete aircraft trajectories from the departing to the arrival airport, along with engine thrust and fuel flow information. The noise engine of IMPACT is compliant with ICAO Doc 9911 and the newly adopted 4th Edition of ECAC.CEAC Doc29.
IMPACT is a web-based application that is a significant improvement in performing robust assessments of noise and fuel-burn/gaseous emissions, and of trade-offs between them.
The main characteristic of IMPACT is that it is a web-based modelling platform remotely accessed by users through a dedicated and secured portal. All the calculations are performed on dedicated servers hosted by EUROCONTROL. This web-based approach has multiple advantages. First of all, users do not need to install any specific software on their machines; they only need a web browser to connect to the IMPACT web-portal, upload their input data, launch calculations, and visualise and download the results. Furthermore, this approach also allows an easy update of the various databases used by IMPACT, without the need to redistribute a new software package, and provides the flexibility to select the database versions to be used in a study. Lastly, it facilitates the secure storage of sensitive aircraft reference data such as the BADA data.
IMPACT supports various types of input data, which can be retrieved from various sources (real-time and arithmetic model-based simulations, real data or more theoretical definitions of flight procedures).
The main results produced by IMPACT include noise contour shapefiles, surface and population counts using the European Environment Agency (EEA) population database, estimates of fuel burn and emissions of a wide range of pollutants, and gridded (i.e. geo-referenced) inventories of emissions within the LTO portion, as an introduction to further – more detailed – Local Air Quality (LAQ) assessments.
During the Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP)/10 work programme, IMPACT was thoroughly reviewed against other CAEP-approved models and contributed to the CO2 standard analysis as well as the greenhouse gas and LAQ trends assessment.
While meeting CAEP assessment needs, IMPACT has also been developed to comply with SESAR environmental assessment requirements and is the recommended assessment tool for this European ATM research programme.
The noise engine of IMPACT is compliant with ICAO Doc 9911 and the newly adopted 4th Edition of ECAC.CEAC Doc29.
