Detecting Change-Points in Aircraft Noise Effects

Economic reasons require the capacity of many existing airports to be extended. Residents living close to the airports, however, are not willing to accept the increased stress resulting from the higher amount of starts and landings and are thus forming a strong opposition. It is of interest to consider the relationship between causal variables (e.g., effective level of energy or vertical distance from the flightpath) and binomial distributed effect variables (e.g., percentage of highly annoyed residents). Typically, this dose-response curve is a decreasing curve with a high plateau near the flightpath, a low plateau far away from the flightpath and a more or less extended intermediate region. Here, we propose estimates and tests for one and two change-points, which provide us with a means to identify the zone where the stress for the affected population is intolerable as well as the zone where no stress due to aircraft noise is observed. The procedures are illustrated by data from a study at Düsseldorf airport.