Assessment of Environmental Management and Land Use Planning in the Airport Surrounding Areas (Case Study: Mehrabad Airport)

Abstract Airports are the most basic parts of air transport system, and presence of new generation of modern aircrafts, rapid growth of traffic volume and demand for air travel, and adoption of coherent and precise rules and regulations for various stages of flight operations have made the airport a complex and dynamic system. The aim of this study is to perform management and land use planning using an environmental approach at Mehrabad Airport. The first hypothesis is that the airport surrounding areas are related to flight safety. The second hypothesis is that the use of the airport surronding areas is related to environmental protection, and the third hypothesis is that land management and planning affect the comfort and security of the people residing in the airport surrounding area. The study was carried out through investigation of the study area using Arc GIS 9.3 software to produce geographic position maps of the area, land use areas, and communication networks. Then, by adjusting and distributing the questionnaire, the effective factors on land use management were assessed and the strengths and weaknesses of the strategic management method were identified. The questionnaires were analyzed by correlation analysis using the SPPS19 software. The findings of the first hypothesis suggest that there is a meaningful and direct relationship between the parameters of "the airport surrounding area" and "flight security". In the second hypothesis, there is a meaningful and inverse relationship between the factors "how to use the airport surrounding area" and "environmental protection". The third hypothesis indicated the meaningful and direct relationship between the variables of "land management and planning" and "comfort and security of the people residing in the airport surrounding area". Discussion and  Results of the analysis show that among the respondents, most of the pilots (90.5%) believe that there is a strong relationship between the the airport surrounding areas and the flight safety. Only 4.8% believed that this relationship was insignificant. In contrast, 4.8% of the remaining respondants also reported this connection to be very much.