How airports enhance the environmental sustainability of operations: A critical review from the perspective of Operations Research

The escalating demand for air travel has significant environmental implications, such as air pollution and noise nuisance, compelling airports to mitigate their negative impacts on the environment. Operations Research (OR) has played a crucial role in optimizing environment-oriented airport traffic flow management problems, including gate assignment, pushback control, taxi planning, tow vehicles operations, runway scheduling, and aircraft trajectory optimization, to align with airports’ environmental objectives. Despite the thriving body of papers, there is a lack of an inclusive review framework for papers in this field. Therefore, this paper introduces a comprehensive classification framework and conducts a thorough review of the application of OR in addressing environmental concerns. The review identifies prevailing trends, summarizes environmental concerns and methodologies, and presents research agendas. Future studies should prioritize efforts to enhance existing research in terms of modeling and algorithms while also exploring the interdisciplinary incorporation of OR with reinforcement learning and big data analytics, as well as its application in emerging scenarios.