The environmental impact assessment of greener trajectories: the GreAT project

GreAT (Greener Air Traffic Operations) is a project funded by the European Commission under the H2020 framework programme. The overall objective is to reduce the fuel consumption and gas emissions during "gate-to-gate" flight phases through developing and assessing environment-friendly air traffic operational concept, adaptive airspace and green trajectory optimization technologies, and supporting avionic systems. Based on the scientific description of the impact of aviation emissions on the climate, the work within GreAT is seeking the key factors of the impact about aviation emissions on climate change characteristics by using sensitivity analysis, such as greenhouse gases, pollutant gases and condensation, and then select these factors as environmental impact assessment indicators, including fuel consumption, aviation emissions, air quality and greenhouse effect, establishing a calculation model for evaluation indicators using the fuel consumption model, gas emission model and climate change model. System analysis methods are used to build an aviation emission environmental impact (EIA) assessment index system structure, apply environmental impact assessment indicators, construct a general environmental impact assessment index system, and propose a comprehensive assessment method for aviation environmental impact. The following step in the project is the environmental impact assessment of air traffic operations to determine how green air traffic performs. According to the existing air traffic operation patterns, the flight characteristics and trajectory characteristics of the aircraft are determined, and the environmental impact assessment index system is used to evaluate the environmental impact under the air traffic operation plan and the impact and improvement effect on climate change.