In many places, ongoing urban expansion, in conjunction with higher traffic volumes, have reduced or dissolved the separation between environmental noise zones. This is specifically the case near airports, with conflicting land-use demands for housing and flight operations. Apart from zoning, aircraft noise plays no role in urban design and form studies. Serving as tall noise barriers, recent studies in a designated test street demonstrated the potential of buildings as noise barriers for reducing aircraft noise in urban contexts. Correlating sound shielding levels with the elevation angle of passing aircraft, results from the test street environment were used for mapping shielding potential areas on a regional scale. This study introduces a spatial framework combining aircraft trajectory, and land-use, geo-data to determine such areas using a geo-spatial processing methodology in QGIS. It is applied the Amsterdam Schiphol airport region as case study. The methodology determines areas affected by noise from passing aircraft at elevation angles identified as most indicative for leveraging optimal shielding by buildings. The subsequent map layers can aid urban planners in decision-making processes for further exploring the potential of urban design for mitigating aircraft noise in urban airport regions, serving further tool development for livable and healthier neighborhood design.

Aircraft noise exposure causes annoyance, sleep disturbance and contributes to the development of severe long-term health outcomes for populations living under frequently used air routes. Traditional land-use based noise abatement strategies have shown limited success in mitigating these effects, prompting interest in alternative design measures such as the use urban greenery to improve soundscapes and reduce noise annoyance. This study assesses the effect of the visual presence of trees on aircraft noise perception during flyover events in a controlled setting. An audio-visual Virtual Reality (VR) experiment was conducted, showcasing two scenarios of a residential inner courtyard during a flyover event with and without trees. Following each scenario, participants (N=33) rated their soundscape perception using standardized soundscape questionnaires (ISO-12913). Preliminary results suggest that the scenarios with the trees present were on average perceived as acoustically more pleasant compared to those without greenery. This suggests that greenery, particularly trees, positively influence the perception of aircraft noise in urban environments through non-acoustical factors, warranting further investigation. These results contribute to a more mechanistic understanding of the effect of urban greenery on aircraft noise perception and aim to provide a base for future in-situ studies.

Urban heat stress and noise significantly impact the health and well-being of urban inhabitants. This biometeorological study analyses microclimate, sound, and human perceptions in three vegetative courtyards near Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. The courtyards operate with sixteen Kestrel heat-stress trackers and six Munisense microphones for year-round microclimate and soundscape monitoring to inform urban design strategies to improve pedestrian thermal and acoustical comfort.

A human measurement campaign was conducted on 23-July-2024, involving 24 student participants (aged 22–28) equipped with skin-temperature sensors (iButtons) and heart-rate wristbands (Polar). They completed mobile questionnaires on ‘right-here-right-now’ comfort perceptions during three transect walks following a stop-and-go protocol (3-minute intervals, total duration: 60 minutes). Walks spanned three courtyards: one with a vertical vegetative wall, another with 36 Tilia × europaea potted trees, and a third featuring a slanted roof with an overhang. The study examines the interplay between heat, noise, and environmental perceptions across courtyard designs.

Findings suggest overhangs provide significant cooling (UTCI -10°C) and noise reduction due to sound shadowing. Slanted roofs scatter aircraft noise (LAeq -5 dB(A)) but have minimal cooling effects. Green walls diffract sound but reflect short-wave radiation, limiting cooling. Trees intercept solar heat effectively but offer limited aircraft noise reduction due to foliage gaps.

Perceptual analyses indicate the tree courtyard offered optimal thermal (TSV) and acoustical comfort (ASV). A mixed-linear regression analysis tested five hypotheses on TSV, ASV, UTCI, and LAeq. One hypothesis was rejected: heat stress and aircraft noise do not confound acoustical perception. Two were partially supported: thermal and/or acoustical perception may confound acoustical perception. Two were fully supported: aircraft noise can confound thermal perceptions and acoustical perception can confound thermal perception.

The discussions and conclusions present evidence-based design and planning strategies to mitigate environmental stressors and enhance pedestrians' psychological and behavioural adaptations to heat and noise in urban environments.

Aircraft noise is a major stressor for communities in the vicinity of airports. Aircraft noise prediction models omit the built environment, based on an implicit assumption that the impact of buildings on the propagation of aircraft noise is neglectable. In this article a study is presented in which aircraft noise levels were measured near walls facing towards and away from aircraft flyovers in an urban test environment near Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The test environment comprises three adjacent courtyards, each enclosed by stacked shipping containers. To examine the influence of street geometry on aircraft noise, specifically for slanted roofs and building insets, the shipping containers were stacked in a different pattern around each courtyard. In total, sound levels for 2383 aircraft flyovers were analysed across five months at ten microphone positions within the courtyards, for both arrivals and departures. Depending on the geometry of the courtyards, mean differences (L_A,max) between facades with- and without a line of sight towards the aircraft ranged between −1,3dBA and 5,0dBA for arrivals, and 8,7dBA and 13,6dBA for departures. SEL values ranged between between −0,8dBA and 4,3dBA for arrivals, and 8,1dBA and 11,6dBA for departures. The results suggest that slanted roofs perpendicular to the flight direction deflect incident sound, substantially reducing the sounds levels inside courtyards. Contrarily, building insets at building sides facing away from the flight paths did not reduce sound levels underneath the overhangs significantly. The findings stress the importance of architectural and urban design to mitigate aircraft noise.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of different urban building geometries (six courtyards, two canyons, two slabs) on heat mitigation and aircraft noise attenuation, in order to support an evidence-based retrofit plan for future airport neighborhoods. Using ’Pachyderm + ENVI-met simulations + field measurements’, we found that the slanted-roof, low-rise courtyard exhibited optimal acoustic-thermal performance (SPLmin = 71.1 dB(A), σU T CI < 5 ◦C), while the mid-rise canyon demonstrated limited performance (SPLmin = 93.4 dB(A), σU T CI > 10 ◦C). These findings were observed under averaged boundary conditions of a 140 dB(A) aircraft sound source and a diurnal MRT range of 60 ◦C on a heatwave day in July 2022.

Analyzing the impact of aircraft noise on urban areas requires specific consideration of sound propagation over long distances, which is not typically covered by tools designed for indoor acoustics. Although it is unclear to what extent existing parametric tools that combine 3D modeling and acoustic simulation can accurately replicate these spatial scales, they provide a valuable means of exploring design options and optimizing performance. One such tool, Pachyderm, a numerical model based on geometrical acoustics, was used to simulate a field lab near Schiphol Airport to assess its applicability for urban acoustics simulation. The simulation results were compared to in-situ measurements, with a focus on differentiating the effect of air noise attenuation based on varying building shapes and the accuracy of the resulting sound pressure level values. The most decisive factors in reducing noise in the courtyard were found to be the building’s orientation and slope relative to the sound source. However, as the design complexity increased with the addition of features such as shielding, the accuracy of the simulation results decreased.

Aircraft noise is a major source of noise pollution in areas close to airports. Previous studies showed that the design of the urban and architectural context affects local sound levels. Due to surface reflections and edge diffraction, sound levels are reduced or amplified, depending on building geometry and surface materials. Compared to other traffic sources in cities, aircraft noise is currently neither integrated in sound prediction models, nor validated for such purposes. To validate the results from previous computational studies, a full scale experiment was set up. In the experiment, sound and weather data is collected which is used to identify the influence of building geometry and cladding on the propagation of aircraft noise. A subset of the measurements collected on days without wind was used to validate a method for measurements with scale models in an an-echoic room. Based on a series of discrete mono-pole source positions, three flight paths were simulated. Measurements in the an-echoic room were compared with the measurements in the full-scale field lab. This paper presents the results of the experiment and sets out a method for scale model experiments focusing on the prediction of sound in urban canyons for overhead sound sources.

Aircraft are a source of noise pollution in areas surrounding airports. Buildings shield or amplify local sound levels, albeit that the level of shielding varies considerably. The sound pressure levels reaching ground receivers in the built environment depend on flight position relative to the receiver, atmospheric and weather effects, and the composition of the surrounding buildings. Their combined effect on local ground sound levels and noise shielding remains unclear however.

The impact of urban and architectural design on the local attenuation of aircraft noise is studied in a full-scale field lab near Amsterdam Schiphol airport. In the experiment, two microphones and a weather station collected sound and meteorological data. The measurements are combined with spatial aircraft radar data for a period of one month. Statistical analyses are conducted to gain insights into the causes of variance in shielding effects.

This paper presents a method to combine and analyse sound, flight and meteorological data, for one-second time intervals. Aircraft orientation, obstruction from buildings between source and receiver, operation type and propulsion type influence the building shielding for this case study. The orientation of airplanes relative to the field lab records the highest effect on the shielding of the analysed variables (R^2=0.58).