Statistical Considerations for the Design and Execution of NASA's Community Noise Surveys

The World Health Organization defines community noise as noise emitted from all sources apart from noise at an industrial workplace. Example sources include neighborhood and construction noise, noise from road and rail, and air traffic noise. In particular, overland supersonic flights have been banned in the United States since the 1970s based on data accumulated during the 1960s; the degree of reported annoyance from the resulting sonic booms was a key factor leading to the prohibition. In subsequent years, scientific and engineering understanding has led to the potential to produce low amplitude sonic booms, or ‘sonic thumps’, during supersonic flight through aircraft design choices. Aircraft manufacturers have expressed renewed interest in producing supersonic commercial aircraft, but without appropriate changes to regulation, only overseas routes can be traveled supersonically. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will be flying the X-59 demonstrator aircraft in a series of community tests to begin in the 2024 fiscal year. In this presentation we provide some historical context for the current prohibitions on supersonic commercial flight. Using data collected during earlier NASA risk reduction tests, we demonstrate how generalized linear mixed models can be used to inform the functional dose-response response curve. Finally, we discuss some of the challenges in designing the future community studies and generalizing them to a nationally-representative dose-response curve. The study effort will be of national and international importance as the data and models prepared during the community tests will be provided to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in order to help noise regulators determine if supersonic flight will be permitted over land once again and at what demonstrable noise levels.