Study to promote noise-conscious behavior launched on behalf of the German Environment Agency

Noise has a strong direct influence on our health and well-being. It is therefore obvious to protect people from noise or to avoid the generation of noise. Since a large part of disturbing noise nowadays depends directly on human behavior, promoting noise-aware behavior is a promising measure towards a quieter and thus healthier environment. HFC, together with the nexus Institute and the departments of audio communication, and psychoacoustics at the Technical University of Berlin, is now conducting research on behalf of the German Environment Agency to determine how aware people are of the noise they themselves generate. Furthermore, it will be evaluated what influence public participation can have on people’s noise awareness. Based on this, strategies and measures are to be developed to motivate people to adopt a more noise-conscious behavior in the long term. In this project, HFC is responsible for the conception and implementation of the qualitative survey and the quantitative field study.

Digital NOTAMs for BER airport

On January 1, 2023, the iNOTAM (Integration of digital NOTAMs) project was launched, involving three project partners. Under the consortium leadership of HFC Human-Factors-Consult and in collaboration with project partners m-click.aero and Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, the creation, processing, and provision of NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) will be digitized. NOTAMs are brief, manually created messages for pilots and airport operations personnel regarding flight operational restrictions, such as construction sites, maintenance, or other equipment failures. Current NOTAMs are formulated by operators and are currently only readable and interpretable by humans due to abbreviations or lack of context. The project will utilize the existing digital database of air traffic infrastructure to create georeferenced, fully digital NOTAMs at the airport. These digital NOTAMs can then be provided to all authorized traffic participants, such as pilots in their assistance and navigation systems.

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