Project 25 - Noise Exposure Response: Sleep & Student Learning
Project 25's goal is to understand the impact of aircraft noise on sleep, and to develop models that predict sleep disruption for a given aircraft noise profile. Chronic sleep disturbance is associated with multiple health issues including cognitive difficulties, exhaustion, high blood pressure, diabetes, and depression. The amount of time spent in different sleep stages is important in terms of physical and psychological well being. What is not fully understood is how much aircraft noise impacts sleep in communities around airports, and how impacts due to aircraft noise compare with those due to other things (other noise sources, weight, age, stress, etc.) that are known to affect sleep. Models that predict the probability of being in different sleep stages given different profiles of night-time noise exposure are being examined, as are models that predict awakenings. The aim is to build on these and other models and incorporate a better characterization of how noise characteristics, for example, loudness and rate of onset, affect sleep and time spent in different sleep stages. By coupling the resulting sleep disturbance models with noise prediction tools, it will be possible to show, e.g., potential awakening patterns in communities for a wide range of different airport and air traffic scenarios. The model will be tuned to produce results that replicate those observed in field studies (usually conscious awakenings) and in laboratory studies (both awakenings and sleep structure). The community response simulation will help us quantify how much and what type of data should be collected in future sleep disturbance studies to fully validate the proposed higher-fidelity models. With the most recent U.S. field study dating back to 1996, and when compared to the sleep disturbance efforts of other, especially European, countries, U.S. research on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep has lagged over the past 15 years, while aircraft noise has continued to evolve. Within this period, air traffic has changed significantly, with substantial increases in traffic volume, on one hand, and significant improvements in noise levels of single aircraft, on the other. Due to inter-cultural differences, results from studies performed outside the U.S. may not be transferred 1:1 to U.S. domestic airports. Therefore, it is important that U.S. field studies be conducted to acquire current sleep disturbance data for varying degrees of noise exposure. It is one major objective of Project 25 to suggest an optimal study design for a U.S. field study on the effects of aircraft noise on sleep based on the current scientific knowledge in both the noise effects research and the sleep research area.
- Record URL:
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Supplemental Notes:
- Program Information: Energy and Environment, Noise Impacts and Mitigation. Additional grant number: 1109443
Language
- English
Project
- Status: Active
- Funding: $100000.00
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Contract Numbers:
Grant 10894182
Grant 10929055
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Sponsor Organizations:
Federal Aviation Administration
800 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC United States 20591 -
Project Managers:
Hileman, James
Maurice, Lourdes
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Performing Organizations:
Purdue University, West Lafayette
610 Purdue Mall
West Lafayette, IN United States 47907-2040 -
Principal Investigators:
Waltz, Ian
- Start Date: 20150807
- Expected Completion Date: 0
- Actual Completion Date: 0
- Source Data: RiP Project 40245
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Aircraft noise; Airport noise; Public health; Quality of life; Sleep deprivation
- Geographic Terms: Europe; United States
- Subject Areas: Aviation; Safety and Human Factors; I15: Environment;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01572486
- Record Type: Research project
- Source Agency: Department of Transportation
- Contract Numbers: Grant 10894182, Grant 10929055
- Files: RIP
- Created Date: Aug 8 2015 1:01AM