Environmental effects of airport nodes: a methodological approach

Airports are a local source of environmental impacts that should be estimated and evaluated in order to promote a right development of these transport nodes. The aim of this paper is to present a methodological approach able to identify the environmental impacts produced by an airport node, particularly atmospheric pollution produced not only by aircraft but also by land vehicles for handling operations and airport connection, given the airport multifunction role as well as its interchange multimodal function. The identified methodology is formed by several steps; the most relevant ones are addressed to the estimation of the air transport demand (linked to the number of aircraft movements) and the car mode share to go in/out the airport. The proposed methodology is useful in order to establish standard procedures able to identify the airport environmental impact footprint for a sustainable development of the air transport within the larger transport system.