BACKGROUND
As an industry-driven research program, ACRP relies on a flow of quality research ideas. Traditionally, ACRP primarily has used a bottom-up approach for these ideas, expressed as formal problem statements. ACRP’s Oversight Committee has adopted a strategic plan for the program that includes as a priority ensuring “that problem statements are of the highest quality and greatest relevance to the airport industry.” As a key step to achieving this strategic priority, ACRP is developing a series of research roadmaps, one for each of its 10 topic areas. The goal of these research roadmaps is to identify gaps in knowledge and practice, uncover key opportunities and challenges, and outline and prioritize specific research ideas needed to address these gaps. The roadmaps will also produce research ideas to be entered into ACRP’s IdeaHub, its online collaboration platform for turning ideas into problem statements to be considered for funding.
Airports face unique, numerous, and ever-evolving environmental challenges and opportunities. Common environmental topics have focused on noise, water quality, and air quality. More recently, issues related to sustainability and resiliency have emerged. A research roadmap is needed to help airport industry practitioners identify and prioritize research needs related to environmental issues.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this research is to develop an airport environmental research roadmap. The roadmap should recommend priorities and timing, set a strategy, and provide a rationale for the recommendations. In addition, the roadmap should:
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Focus on airport environmental research needs to be undertaken within the next 5 years;
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Consider existing relevant environmental roadmaps and research recommendations;
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Consider the needs of airports of all sizes, geographies, levels and types of activity, and resource constraints;
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Recognize airports are a component of communities and intermodal transportation systems;
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Address potential positive environmental effects that airports can generate;
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Reflect priorities of a broad group of stakeholders;
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Prioritize research with consideration to ACRP’s strategic plan;
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Create environmental research ideas to be entered into ACRP’s IdeaHub for further development into problem statements; and
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Include a long-range (i.e., beyond 5 years) environmental research needs assessment that accounts for uncertainty, data limitations, emerging technologies, and evolving policies.
STATUS
Research is complete. Results are provided in ACRP Web-Only Document 45, a Dataset, and an Interactive Roadmap.
