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2007 TRB Workshop on Measuring the Economic Significance of Airports

Workshop 161 Measuring the Economic Significance of Aviation
Sunday, January 21, 2007, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Palladia Room, Omi Shoreham Hotel

Aviation forms an essential component of modern life. From the ever growing volume of air travel to the increasing use of air freight to move high value, time-sensitive or perishable commodities, it is clear that the air transportation system plays a critical role in the economy of the 21st century. Therefore it is not surprising that many airport authorities and other agencies responsible for aviation planning and development have undertaken studies to measure the economic impact of the aviation activities at the facilities they operate or are responsible for planning, and that a fairly standard approach to such studies has evolved. Unfortunately, this approach often confuses costs with benefits and provides little guidance on how different planning or investment decisions would change the contribution of the aviation system to economic growth, either in the aggregate or as it affects different stakeholders or communities. Therefore these studies, while commonly predicting that the contribution of the aviation system to a region’s economy is impressively large, typically provide very little help in making the difficult planning decisions that arise in developing the aviation system to meet future needs. This workshop will take a critical look at the current approaches to measuring the economic significance of the aviation system and examine how well they address the key issues and planning challenges that will have to be faced in the future. It will explore how economic impact assessment methodology can be improved in order to make the results more credible and more useful to decision-makers, and will address the associated research needs and data requirements to better understand the contribution of aviation to changes in economic activity, from both an aggregate and disaggregate perspective.

An important objective of the workshop discussion is to identify a research agenda to improve the understanding of the issues involved in measuring the economic significance and impact of aviation. It is anticipated that the discussion will begin the process of defining potential research topics that can be submitted to the Airport Cooperative Research Program.

Workshop Program

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