National Airspace System - Wide Environmental Impact Model

Noise and emissions impacts with NAS-wide geographic coverage

Environmental modeling is an increasingly important aspect in the evaluation of both existing and proposed changes to airport and airspace operations.  The FAA’s Operational Evolution Plan (OEP) and Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) objectives for the NextGen air transportation system, specifically reference environmental impacts as a major factor in the evolving infrastructure, technology and operational concepts for the National Airspace System (NAS).  These future concepts span a vast range of potential operational behaviors, requiring environmental analysis to ensure consistency with emerging environmental constraints, and compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) disclosure requirements. Metron Aviation's NextGen prototype, National Airspace System-Wide Environmental Impact Model (NASEIM), assists in identifying environmental operational behaviors.

Metron Aviation supports large-scale NASA, JPDO and FAA efforts in the development and assessment of innovative airspace and operational concepts. The prototype NASEIM, is capable of computing associated noise and emissions impacts with geographic coverage for the entire NAS, through regional and local levels. NASEIM uses the FAA-approved modeling methods for noise and emissions calculated from a single input data stream, which reduces data quality assurance costs. Additional capabilities include rapid computation through use of parallel, distributed processing, remote access from any computer with network connections and  an open interface to facilitate interaction with other tools and models.