Study of children's exposure to aircraft noise at school and application of a new method to pilot cases in proximity to the A.Vespucci airport in Florence (Italy).

Noise due to take offs and landings at airports affects 0.6 million people at European level, causing average Lden values above 55 dB outside urban areas. This scenario represents a much smaller proportion if compared with the one caused by road and rail traffic noise, although aircraft noise is considered by citizens as more annoying than the other noise sources. Currently, some of the open research topics, which are the most highlighted in the scientific literature concerning aircraft noise, regard the need to test the new CNOSSOS-EU calculation method proposed by the EU Directive 2015/996, to be mandatory adopted by EU Member States within 2022, and the exposition of children to noise together with the development of specific curves of annoyance. The CNOSSOS-EU calculation method defines new algorithms for creating strategic noise maps for road, railway, aircraft and industrial noise. The new calculation method should be adapted to national legislation before the end of 2018, and applied in the next round of 2021/2022. Concerning this first open issue, technicians and experts are requested at EU level to test in simple pilot cases the new introduced calculation methods and the software in which they are implemented. Consequently, in the current work a simulation of the CNOSSOSEU calculation method has been carried out by considering as aircraft noise source the A.Vespucci airport in Florence and comparing the outputs with those obtained by applying the well-established INM calculation standard. Moreover, both models have been validated according to a noise measurement campaign carried-out in correspondence of one of the public buildings closest to the airport's runway, specifically a building of the University of Florence located in Sesto Fiorentino. Concerning the second thematic, contrasting outcomes have been obtained from already carried-out studies, in terms of cognitive tests results and possibilities for children to develop resilience skills together with coping mechanisms. Moreover, until now tests have been mainly carried-out during the normal course of lessons, without the possibility of controlling the time relative to the passage of the individual aircraft. Finally, new and updated curves of annoyance specific for children need to be introduced and evaluated. In the Manuscript a schematic protocol to support the application of the new developed methodology in further pilot cases contributing to the cited open issues is illustrated, together with the deep description of each phase of the method, according to the experience carried out during the research. Moreover, the application of the method to the two selected pilot schools is described, together with the phases of data acquisition and analysis. Due to the PhD activity's timing and available resources, the application of the developed method to the pilot cases and the consequent collection and analysis of the data have constituted only a first attempt of investigation, certainly they do not have the claim to be a complete and concluded work but a cue to continue the investigation with other samples of students, possibly more congruent between them, and resources. Different skills and subjects such as acoustics, audio signal processing techniques, optimization algorithms, psychology, sociology and statistics skills have been involved in the research and in the method definition. Finally, possible application scenarios and key aspects to be addressed in a future research work are described in the thesis.