P. Kokus, M. Hepting, A. Leipold

Within the last years, the area of conflict between the continuous growth of the air transport sector and the negative effects on the environment like air transport?s contribution to GHG emissions or the burden of noise in airport surroundings became more and more evident. An especial challenge consists of the partly diverging interests among the stakeholders in this development (e.g. airlines, airports, ATM, passengers, supplier industry, airport residents and environmental associations). Facing these conditions, the challenging task for politics is to balance these interests, to reach compromises and to elaborate measures for a sustainable development in general and in regard of the functionality of the air transport system. Therefore, a well-founded analysis with regard to the complex nature of the air transport system, its dimensions, its drivers and its actors is needed. Addressing these requirements, the Institute of Air Transport and Airport Research has developed an indicator system which is capable of showing general trend lines as starting basis for a continuous monitoring of the air transport system development in consideration of sustainability issues. This system is signified by two types of indicators which allow in connection a holistic analysis of the long-term developments in global air transport with a focus of more than the last twenty years. The first category of these indicators is represented by so-called Performance Indicators (PIs) which mainly deal with the question how efficient the air transport system works with regard to its essential function: the fast transport of passengers and goods. For this purpose more than 25 indicators were developed that allow altogether a detailed overview of the traffic and financial performance of global airlines and airports as some of the most important actors in the air transport supply chain. A special priority was in this context also given to the characteristics of the global fleet development as one essential element for estimating the state-of-the-art with regard to the technological development in the air transport sector. As second indicator category, the Sustainable Development Indicators (SDIs) were introduced as they allow to go one step further by investigating the relation between air transport internal and external developments and to show how they influence each other with regard to the economic, ecological and social objectives that are important in reference to a sustainability approach. In connection with this task, further 15 single indicators were developed. The strength by the structure of this indicator system is that it allows a continuous analysis of on-going important trends in the air transport sector by a discussion of the separate indicators but also by identifying interdependencies between them what facilitates putting trends in an overall context. For example, the correlation between the GDP development per capita in different world regions and the number of trips per capita can be investigated this way. Summing up this example, the developed indicator system provides also a good starting point to discuss the development of the air transport sector in contrast to other transport modes and further sectors against the background of general sustainability goals from the field of politics. The indicator system is also already part of an advanced monitoring system for the development of international air transport which can be found under www.airtransport-monitor.eu.

Deutscher Luft- und Raumfahrtkongress 2013, Stuttgart

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt - Lilienthal-Oberth e.V., Bonn, 2014

Conference Paper

englisch

21,0 x 29,7 cm, 11 Seiten

urn:nbn:de:101:1-2014022812818

air transport indicators, sustainable development

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28.02.2014